The Blind Dragon (7 page)

Anna covered the bodies with straw and wrapped their swords, daggers, and the rest of their gear in a fire blanket. She was about to hide that bundle under the straw, too, but then she reconsidered, re-opened the blanket, and took a Tevéss dagger from the pile. The foal cooed.

Anna went to a shelf on the side wall and fetched a large glass beaker filled with dragons' elixir. She held the beaker up to the window to be sure of its color and consistency. It was thick and viscous, a syrup made of liquid silver.

"Great stuff." She nodded. The great Queen Katherine had invented it many millennia past. It would keep a dragon strong, help keep the bugs off him, make his wings soft, his scales hard, and help his flight bladders. It was also good for his gut. The foal licked its chops.

Anna poured ten measures of the elixir into a tin feeding tube and brought it to Nightlove. The big dragon didn't open her eyes as Anna slid the tube's point between her huge teeth. Then Anna gave one measure to the foal; it smacked its lips at the taste. Anna cleaned and stored the tube, opened a half-door in the far wall, and dragged a fat, bleating merino back into the stable. She clipped the merino's halter to an iron ring on the wall.

"Dinner's on," she said.

Neither Nightlove nor the foal seemed interested. Nightlove snored away. The foal gave the merino a passing glance, grunted, and turned its huge eyes to the buried pile of bodies, instead.

"No," Anna said firmly.

The foal went still.

"If you eat those, you'll make a mess. Someone'll see. We don't have time to clean up again. Look at this yummy thing." She patted the merino on its wooly side. "Look at all this good stuff."

The foal lifted its snout and turned away.

"Suit yourself," Anna said. "You'll be hungry soon enough. Gotta go."

The foal jerked its head up and hissed. To Anna's ears, it sounded more like distress than anger. It reared up on its haunches, its eyes wide, almost as if it was worried. It hissed again, like a question, then mewled loudly.

Anna shook her head. If she was going to complete her mission and keep the foal safe—and quiet—in the stall, she was going to have to calm it down. She walked over to it. The foal promptly flopped back into the straw, rolled onto its back, and spread its wings, gazing up at her. Anna warmed her hands with her breath, knelt, and rubbed the foal's stomach and chest. Its white scales were smooth and warm to the touch, its muscles soft under supple dragon skin. As Anna massaged it, the foal's scales grew warmer. It cooed gently, its eyes slowly closing. Nightlove's snore got even louder.

"There we are," Anna said softly, after a few more moments of massage. "That's a good boy."

The foal's eyes cracked open, but just barely.

"You were brave, no doubt," Anna said soothingly. "You saved us. But you've gotta learn to reduce your aspect, make yourself a smaller mark. You need training." She let her voice go even softer, a gentle murmur. "Spread wings can be intimidating, but they make a nice target for trained soldiers. You might've scared those guardsmen a bit, but d'Rent didn't care. What would you have done if he'd hit a joint, or a tendon, or a flight bladder? Or your head?"

Anna placed her hand on the foal's jaw. It turned slowly into her touch, its huge eyes shut. Its white scales were smooth and very warm.

"You gotta learn," she said softly, lulling him to sleep. He breathed deeply. "In combat, a tight, furled shape is ideal. Small is stealth, and stealth is strong. So says Master Zar. That's a good boy."

As it nestled further down in the straw, she looked at its right wing. D'Rent's bullet had passed clean through the leathery membrane, three fingers away from the foal's body. No blood, no real damage. The rest of the wing looked perfect.

"A very good boy."

The foal snored contentedly.

"And because you're such a good boy," she whispered, "I've got a name for you. Your name is Moondagger."

Big mistake.

The foal's eyes snapped open. It rolled over, reared up on its haunches, and spread its wings, showing her its fangs. They seemed bigger than ever.

"Oh boy," she muttered. "You like that, eh?"

Moondagger growled and did a funny little hop.

"Moondagger it is, then. My father commanded the Sun Daggers and Nightlove's your mother—makes sense, eh? Now, I've gotta go."

Moondagger hissed.

"Easy, there. Easy."

But it was too late. Moondagger was completely alert, cocking his head this way and that as if waiting for his own orders, as if sleep was the last thing on his mind. If he had a name, then he must have a mission, right?

Anna nodded. "I'll be back. You've got an important task, too, Dagger. You'll watch over Nightlove. If enemies come, you'll protect her. That's an important job. She's the best we have. Probably the best on Dávanor. That means the best in the Kingdom. You'll stay here and protect her."

Moondagger snarled, but he almost seemed convinced.

At least he settled back in the straw.

Anna took the high silver dagger that Master Khondus had given her, slipped it snugly behind her back in its sheath, and pulled her tunic over it. Then she strapped the knife she'd taken from the bundle of enemy gear against her left forearm, under her one remaining baggy tunic sleeve, just where she'd seen Master Khondus wear his own blade. She practiced drawing it several times until the knife sprang quickly to hand.

Moondagger was very interested in all this, especially the weapons. Most of Anna's formal combat training had dealt with gear used from dragon back: crossbows, bolas, carbines, net guns, lances, and the like. But Master Khondus had always made sure that his dragon squires had instruction in hand fighting too. And Mother and Father had worked with her and her sisters in basic sword- and knife-play since all of them had been old enough to hold a blade.

Of course, Anna knew that she was no match for trained soldiers. But she also had the advantage of appreciating that fact. She understood her own limits. She also understood the value of speed, stealth, and surprise. She was small. She was unthreatening. She was a mere dragon squire, nothing more than a skinny girl from a well-born family of soldiers, a girl not even past her final rites of passage. Nothing to be afraid of.

"Nothing at all," she murmured and touched the blade under her sleeve.

Moondagger stared at her, his eyes wide, as if reading her mind.

"Stay here," she said. "I'll be back soon."

Moondagger grunted.

She'd reduce her own aspect. She'd complete her mission.

They'd never see her coming.

14

A
NNA SHUT THE
stall door and set out at a jog, down the stable's central hallway, past the utility closet, up the stone staircase at the hallway's end, and out the stable's main door. From there, she followed the series of short bridges that connected the lower stables to the Dragon Steps. From there, she took the Steps to the bottom sections of the Drádonhold's fortifications.

The Drádonhold had been built on a tall peak at the foot of the Ahkaggor Mountains, its pinnacle rising jagged and sheer from the green forests below. From a distance, on dragon back, the High Keep and its surrounding town seemed to cling to the mountain top like a cluster of encrusted, silver-grey jewels, slate rooftops sparkling in the sun, the Dragon Steps winding up the mountainside like a snaky, white ribbon.

The Dragon Steps were the only way to reach the mountaintop fortress from the ground. They also provided the primary road for all traffic around the Drádonhold proper. They were a broad, rock-cut set of stairs about twenty paces wide, paved with white marble, fronted by a waist-high parapet. From the forest floor, the Steps switch-backed up the mountainside, across and through the mountain's craggy face—sometimes arched into the sky, sometimes colonnaded within the cliff side—before finally tunneling into the rock itself and opening onto the broad, fortified terrace that lay before the Keep's main gate. From there, you could either enter the main gate proper, which led to the Drádonhold's High Square and the High Gate protected there, or you could continue around the mountain to the east.

The High Keep itself had been built during the Founding, of course, after the Great Sister Aaryn had shaped Dávanor's first High Gate on the broad, natural plateau that would later become the foundation of the Keep's High Square. The usual defensive architecture had followed, carved or built up around the High Gate in the centuries between the Founding and the Plague Years. Millennia later, mostly during the Restoration, various noble clans had built mansions, stores, porticoes, squares, workshops, and homes in and around the High Keep, terracing and tunneling into the sheer cliffs, bridging chasms and clefts, spreading down and out around the fortress proper.

The lower stables, birthing stalls, and flight ramps where Anna worked were all part of a service complex cantilevered from the mountainside on the lower, western side of the peak. Anna's destination—the dragon riders' upper barracks and stables where Sara Terreden and her men were quartered—was on the mountain's far eastern face, high on the other side of the Drádonhold itself. It would take her about a half a bell's time to jog there.

It was still early, so there was little traffic on the Dragon Steps to slow her down, just a handful of lamplighters, bakers-boys, rubbish cart drivers, along with a few shepherds herding their flocks. The sky was the pale pink of pre-dawn, a few shreds of orange cloud smeared across the western horizon. A good number of messenger dragons—of all colors and no larger than geese—glided on the morning breezes above the Keep's highest towers, bringing the early missives to the citadel's offices and secretaries. On a distant battlement, a large crow watched Anna's ascent with silent, beady eyes. A squad of guardsmen wearing House Dradón's blue and white livery marched past her, mail jingling as they tramped down the Steps to relieve the night watch at the mountain's base.

When Anna turned the Step's next switchback, a tall guardswoman wearing the blue and white of House Dradón stopped her with a whistle. The guard was leaning against the Steps' parapet, her steel-tipped spear aimed at the sky.

"Got a friend there, squire." She tapped her spear butt against the Steps' flagstones, lifting her chin and looking over Anna's shoulder.

Anna turned.

Moondagger hung there upside down from a stone balcony like a giant, white bat. The dragon foal craned his neck, looking at Anna with his huge eyes. His broad tongue tasted the air for a moment. Then he showed Anna his fangs. A shred of maroon cloth hung from the corner of his mouth, caught on one of his molars.

Anna tried to make her voice firm. "Gave you an order, Dagger."

Dagger cocked his head.

Anna stepped up, pulled the shred of Tevéss uniform from between Dagger's teeth, and put it in her pocket.

Moondagger gazed at her calmly. And he didn't budge. And it was impossible to be mad at him.

"I suppose when you're hungry, you're hungry." She stroked Dagger's face. He grunted, then gave her a gentle head-butt.

"What's wrong with his eyes?" the guardswoman asked.

"He's blind," Anna said, not looking away from her dragon.

"Doesn't act like it."

Anna nodded. "Doesn't take commands well either."

Moondagger sniffed at the morning breeze and licked his fangs.

A bearded shepherd leading a flock of sheared merinos came down the Steps, around the switchback. When he saw Moondagger, the shepherd stopped short, halted his flock, and frowned. He ticked his crook against the parapet to get the guardswoman's attention. She turned and raised an eyebrow.

"These here sheep hafta go down to the lower stables," the shepherd grunted. He spit over the parapet and nodded at Anna. "They ain't for eatin'. Just been sheared and counted proper, but they ain't for eatin', hear me? And war dragons ain't allowed to run wild, no rider on, flyin' only the Sisters know where, eatin' whatever they please. It tries to eat one of these," the shepherd cocked his head at his flock, "it'll come from her purse, count on it, sure."

"Leave the dragon to me, sir," Anna said.

But the shepherd was right, of course.

Moondagger would continue to attract attention as the High Keep woke. That's why she'd wanted him to stay with Nightlove in the first place. A blind dragon foal following a squire through the Drádonhold was hardly an ideal way to avoid notice. That shred of bloody Tevéss uniform dangling from his mouth hadn't helped, either. But there was no time to wrangle Dagger back down to the stables—even if she could.

"Come on, you," Anna said, looking at Dagger. She nodded her thanks to the guardswoman, gave the shepherd a cool look, and continued up the Dragon Steps.

Moondagger grunted, dropped from his perch, and swooped past Anna, landing on the stone parapet near the flock. There, he growled with feigned menace at the shepherd, nearly falling off the parapet when his right wing bumped against a stone planter, claws scrabbling on stone. The merinos bleated, jumbling away as a single wooly mass, huddling together near the far side of the Steps.

"No eat! No eat!" the shepherd shouted and jumped in front of Moondagger, waving his crook in the foal's face. Dagger recoiled with a hiss. The guardswoman stepped up and put her hand on the shepherd's shoulder.