“We’ll sleep on it,” Peri said finally. “There is absolutely no point in trying to make further plans now, except—”
All of them turned at the sound of claws clicking on stone. A moment later, the fox appeared in the doorway, carrying the plate-size scale carefully in his teeth.
“—except to destroy that,” Peri finished.
“How?” Gina asked doubtfully. “I have always been under the impression that dragon scales were nearly indestructible.”
“Vinegar,” Peri said serenely, and turned to Thalia. “Can you fetch the big jug of wine that went off, please?”
“You mean we’ve finally got a use for that wretched stuff?” Thalia exclaimed. “Oh, grand!” She edged past the prone body of Adam, who twitched his tail out of the way for her, and headed for the room that served as their pantry.
“It is pretty wretched,” Cleo agreed. “Even as vinegar. But I’m not sure—how is vinegar going to work to destroy the scale?”
“It won’t destroy it, exactly,” Peri said, as Thalia returned with a large, and seemingly heavy jug that sloshed. “You see, what happens is this—the vinegar dissolves something. It’s the same thing that makes both bones and our scales hard. Once whatever-it-is is dissolved, then the scale will be like a big piece of wet leather. Except that when it dries again, it will be brittle and can be pounded into powder.”
Gina found a stone basin that had probably once been a bird-bath or something of the sort—for a fortress, this place had once boasted a number of civilized amenities, and it was clear that this courtyard had been nothing more than a pleasant place to sit and relax. The basin was big enough to hold the scale, which Thalia took from the fox and dropped in, pouring the musty-smelling vinegar over the top until the scale was entirely immersed.
Andie wrinkled her nose. She liked the sharp taste of vinegar on things herself, but this stuff was nasty. It must have been inferior wine to begin with, and it certainly had not turned into good vinegar. She found it far more comfortable to focus on trivialities like this than on—
On the idea that her mother wanted her dead.
Every time she thought about it, it made her feel horrible.
But it might not be true. It might be a mistake. It might be that Solon had worked some sort of magic on Cassiopeia to make her acquiesce to this. Surely that had to be it. Surely her mother, her own mother, could not have wanted her dead.
Gina quickly found a slab of stone to put over the top of the basin to seal in the fumes.
Another triviality: vinegar made dragon scales fragile. And Peri had just essentially revealed that to all of them. Someday that might prove to have been a mistake. People talked. “Isn’t it dangerous for you to let this secret—oh—” Andie said, and blushed, realizing in the next moment what a silly question that was.
“Yes,” Peri said, his mouth gaping in a grin. “I hardly think that we are in any danger whatsoever of some dragon-hunter steeping us in bowls of vinegar to soften our scales. It will take at least one full day for that scale to become soft, perhaps more.”
“Not exactly a weapon, then,” said Andie, blushing again.
“Not exactly.” Peri stood up and stretched, extending his wings up into the night sky. “I am for sleep. Sleep will likely bring us many more ideas of what we can do about this situation.” He swiveled his head on his long neck to look at each of them in turn. “Rest assured, even if the spell on Adam is broken, I do not intend to leave until we have it all sorted and you young ladies can go home again.”
Maybe sleep would give her a reason why it couldn’t possibly be Cassiopeia who was involved in this. Why it had to be all Solon’s idea.
“Even if he would, I wouldn’t let him,” Adam said, doing the same. “It may not be our fault that you’re here, but we’re mixed into it now, and it’s our responsibility to get things put right.”
And with that astonishing statement they both turned and took the couple of steps needed to bring them to the far wall of the courtyard. The two dragons did not, as she half expected them to, fly out of the courtyard. Instead, they climbed out, in a most leisurely manner, and settled themselves, one on either side of the entrance to the main section of the fortress. As they lay down and became still, they looked like gigantic stone sculptures. The maidens gathered up their mantles and the cushions that one or two of them had brought to sit on, and made their way toward that entrance. Thalia stayed behind, taking down the torches and plunging them into a bucket of sand to extinguish them.
“Come on,” Amaranth said, gesturing to the two of them. “We’ve already taken your things to a room. I’ll show you.”
As each of the girls reached the doorway, she stopped long enough to take a taper from a pile on a ledge just inside and light it at the torch in the sconce outside.
It was like walking into a cave. Unlike the open, airy Palace, this place was very closed in, with thick walls and relatively narrow passages. Made to be held in a siege, with corridors that a single determined man could defend, or so Andie reckoned. It made her feel a bit confined, but on the other hand, the solid construction had enabled the building to withstand weather and time. So she supposed she needed to be grateful for that much.
Tiny rooms opened up onto the corridor, rooms that would have been like monastic cells if each of the girls hadn’t made hers comfortable in her own way and according to her own taste. As she passed, Andie got glimpses of a riot of draped fabrics like a gypsy tent in one, a tapestry loom in another, painted murals of garden scenes in a third. Finally Amaranth brought them to a pair of wide doorways opposite each other, at the point where the corridor ended in a blank wall.
“These are yours,” she said, gesturing. “I put the Champion’s things in the right, and the Princess’s in the left.” She turned and went back down the corridor, disappearing into her own open door.
Gina and Andie exchanged a glance, and Gina shrugged.
“It seems we’ve found a home for a while,” Gina said. “And it’s certainly more weather-tight than a tent in the woods. Considering how things could have turned out, this is a good situation.”
A good situation…though one where she had learned some things she really wished she had not. But Gina was right. Things could have been much worse. The Wyrding Folk could have been protecting the dragons.
—well, actually they are.
The dragons could have been evil, or in the thrall of an evil Magician.
—actually, that’s true, too.
Still…
Andie found herself surprised by a yawn. “Well,” she said finally. “Good night.”
There didn’t seem much else to say.
My mother’s Chief Adviser wants the throne and plotted to kill me. My mother is either a party to this or under his spell. I’m out in the howling wilderness unable to leave the company of the dragons that were going to eat me. Let’s see. Have I left anything out?
But Gina actually cracked a smile. “We’ve come out of this very well so far,” she pointed out. “Think about it. We didn’t actually need to fight the dragons. We’ve come a long way to understanding just what mischief is going on here in your Kingdom. Now that we know, we can see what we can do about it. That’s plenty for one night, I think.”
And with that, she turned and went into her little room. It seemed that although doors had long since rotted and fallen away, someone had taken the trouble to fix a fall of canvas as a curtain on the inside, for shortly after Gina entered, a thick piece of cloth fell across the doorway, giving her privacy of a sort.
Andie turned in to her own room. As she pulled canvas across her own door and turned to see what awaited her, the candle revealed more than she would have thought. She hadn’t expected a real bed or furniture, so she wasn’t disappointed. But she was pleased, even delighted, to see a fat mattress, presumably stuffed with some kind of plant material, on the floor, her bedroll waiting atop it. There was also a pile of flat cushions next to the bed, and beside them, a stack of simple tunics and dresses like those the others wore.
There was a stone shelf built into the wall; she dripped a little candle wax on it and stuck her taper into it in lieu of a sconce. The more she looked at that bed, the more she wanted to be in it, sleeping. Anything else could wait.
Including, or perhaps especially, troubling thoughts about the Queen.
With the pallet unrolled on the bed, and one of the flat cushions to serve as a pillow, she blew out the candle, got into the bed by feel, and despite all the questions she was trying not to think about, fell deeply and soundly asleep.
* * *
Morning brought no real light into the rooms. Andie only woke because she heard voices and the sound of footsteps in the corridor. When she started to get up, however, her arms hurt so much that she lay back down with a groan.
Which immediately brought a response. Someone shoved the curtain aside and poked her head in the room. “Are you ill?” asked someone that she could not immediately identify.
“My arms hurt,” she said, feeling as if she ought to be apologizing. “All that water-carrying yesterday…”
“Ah.” The head vanished, then returned. “Stay in bed and sleep a bit longer. We forgot you wouldn’t be used to that sort of work. We’ll sort out something for you to do that doesn’t involve hauling heavy things about. At least until you get accustomed to doing things that involve a lot of labor.”
“I—” she began, but the head was gone again. She had been going to say that she wanted to do her share of the work, but evidently that was a given here.
Well, that wasn’t so bad…she’d been taking care of herself all through the journey so far. This was just an extension of the chores she had already been undertaking for herself.
Then again, she had never exactly been the sort of Princess that the Queen would have preferred, what with climbing trees and taking meals to Guards and all. Enough that your mother doesn’t think of you as her daughter? Enough that your mother would be glad to be rid of such an embarrassment?
She pushed the horrid thoughts away and concentrated on seeking the position in which her arms hurt the least.
Once she got her sore arms arranged in a configuration where they actually didn’t hurt she found herself drifting back off to sleep. And it was good not to be waking up before the sun even crested the horizon in order to get on the road as quickly as possible.
Some unknown time later, more footsteps awoke her and she bit back another groan as someone else poked her head into the room.
“Can you wash dishes?” It was Cleo’s voice.
Can I wash dishes? Does she mean, “Do you know how?” or “Are you able to?” Well, in both cases she could. “Yes,” she replied, grateful to be able to say yes to something. It was galling to know that she must appear to be a total burden, and incompetent to these other girls.
Granted, there were others who had also had servants and had never needed to do work themselves. But they had been here a while, and by now probably were as good or better at ordinary tasks as the girls who’d been taking care of themselves and their families all their lives.
“I mean now—are your arms too sore to wash dishes today?” Cleo persisted. “I do need to know this right now.”
“No,” she answered honestly. “This is nothing more than strain, and strain gets better if you warm your limbs up. If I just get up and get moving this will ease off—”
“Yes, but it’s hardly fair to ask you to do work you aren’t physically ready to do,” Cleo said, with a reasonableness that she actually hadn’t expected from the girl. “So we all decided there won’t be any wood-cutting or water-carrying for you for a while. But if you’re up to washing dishes as your regular chore—then that will be fine. It will be better than fine with me—it’s mine, and I hate it. If you’ll take that, I can take weeding the garden, which is not my favorite but it’s better than washing dishes.”
Her mother would have a fainting spell if she could hear her daughter planning to wash dishes like a servant.
Her mother…
She shoved the thought away.
“You need to get up now, though,” Cleo was saying. “Or you won’t get any breakfast.”
“Then I’ll gladly take your place,” Andie replied. “I do know how to wash dishes and I can do that after breakfast. And I’m getting up now, right this minute.”
She rolled out of the bed with some little difficulty, caused at least in part by trying to save her arms as much as possible. She didn’t ever remember anything ever hurting this much. But she did remember what it was like when she’d first started taking dance lessons and using muscles that had never gotten that kind of exercise before. And she remembered very well what she’d had to do then.
Move them.
Once she got out of bed she slowly worked and stretched her arms until the stiffness was gone and they didn’t actually scream at her when she moved them. She changed into a loose sleeveless gown with a sleeved tunic over it, and went out to join the rest of the world.
The rest of the world was finishing a simple breakfast of flatbread, honey and yogurt. Gina greeted her by finishing the last bite of her own food, grabbing her wrist and slathering both Andie’s arms with liniment from a stoppered jar she’d had at her side. It smelled of sharp herbs, but wasn’t unpleasant, and Andie felt it start to go to work almost immediately, warming and loosening the muscles further, easing the aches.
“What’s good for the outside of a horse is usually good for the outside of a man,” Gina said with a grin. “Or a woman. I’d been saving this stuff because Godmother Elena makes it and puts magic into it, but I figured you’d earned a dose this morning.”
“Thanks,” Andie said gratefully. She decided at that moment that she wanted Gina for a friend…if Gina wasn’t already a friend.
She rather hoped that the Champion was. The more she thought about it, the more she hoped. Really, Gina had been very nice to someone that she’d had no real reason to like. After all, if it wasn’t for Andie, where would she be now?
On some other uncomfortable Quest?
Well, maybe. Or maybe still at the Chapter-House.
And Andie was the one who had thrust herself on a reluctant Gina. The Champion had no reason to be happy about that.
But she said herself that having me along made getting around the countryside easier.
Still, when it came right down to it, Andie had been an inconvenience. Yet Gina had never made things uncomfortable for Andie. And once she’d been revealed as being another girl—
I’d really like her for a friend. She looked around at the other young women clustered about the makeshift table, which looked as if someone had taken a slab of the fallen stone of the fortress walls and set it on four stumpy columns.
Actually, someone probably had—that someone being one of the dragons.
I’d like to have all of them for friends, she found herself deciding in surprise. Uncommon trial and hardship, danger and uncertainty had brought them together, but they were making the most of it, and even seemed to be finding ways to enjoy themselves. They’d come to some sort of understanding, it seemed, because she honestly couldn’t tell any differences of rank among them by the way they behaved toward one another.
Even as she thought that, she took a place on a stone bench and the one nearest her passed her the plate of flatbread with no deference or other acknowledgment of rank. Just simple politeness. “Sorry we don’t have any fruit,” Amaranth said apologetically. “Everything is either green or gone.”
Andie spread yogurt over the flatbread and drizzled on honey. “This is good!” she said around a mouthful. “This is fine.” And in fact, it was. It was—
It was the first time in her entire life that she had sat down at a table with girls her own age that weren’t her mother’s handmaidens and ladies. The first time she had sat down with girls who weren’t either ignoring her as the unimportant Princess or giving her false deference.
The first time she had sat down with girls who spoke to her as if they were speaking to another human being.
It was amazing. It was more than amazing. It was eye-opening.
It was wonderful.
She listened to them banter and tease each other, wonder what on earth Peri and Adam were going to do today—evidently the word was in the wind that they were “up to something” this morning—trade off on chores and other things, and then turn and ask her or Gina a question or two. Gina fascinated them—small wonder, most of them had never seen a female Warrior before, while Andie’d had them around her all her life. They wanted to know about the Chapter, the Chapter-House and, most of all, about Godmother Elena.
Finally the last bite was gone and the girls dispersed to their various chores. Gina went out hunting again; evidently none of the other girls had ever taken up the bow, and meat tended to be rather scarce except when the dragons brought it in. That left Cleo and Andie alone with the table and the dirty dishes.
There weren’t a lot of dishes; the cups from which they had drunk their herbal tisane, the plates that had held the flatbread, the bowl that contained the yogurt and two horn spoons. When the last of the girls was gone, taking the leftovers back to the kitchen with her, Cleo gathered up the lot in a big, flat basket. “I’ll show you where to go,” she said, and led the way down into the valley.
They went farther downstream from the place where Andie had fetched the water yesterday, which only made sense, since you wouldn’t want to drink water in which you’d just washed things. Cleo stopped at a spot where there was a shallow ledge running off into the stream. “Here,” she said, putting the basket down and pointing at a patch of coarse reeds growing in the mud where the stone shelf ended. “Grab a handful of horsetail there and scrub everything out twice.”
She sauntered back up the trail. Andie tentatively grasped about half a handful of horsetail and tugged. She recognized it from her botany lessons and from the fact that some of it grew in and around the ornamental ponds at the Palace. But she’d never actually had any of it in her hands before.
She couldn’t imagine why Cleo found this chore so onerous. It was pleasant down here in the valley, with birds singing in the trees overhead, the gurgling of the stream around her, and her spot nicely shaded from the hot sun. Oh, her knees started to ache after a while, kneeling on the hard stone, but it wasn’t that bad, and anyway, she could take a break by sitting cross-legged, or sprawling on the stone, and listening to the forest for a while.
The task didn’t take long. And though the walk back was somewhat difficult up a fairly steep path as it was, and though the dishes were both heavy and awkward, she found she didn’t mind in the least. She had actually washed a full set of meal dishes! That was something altogether novel in her life—something other people did. And perhaps today she would also learn how to wash clothing, as well.
Perhaps for anyone else, the day would have been one of drudgery and boredom, but this was all new to her. People in her position never learned how to wash dishes, or to cook, or to do any of the myriad of things she was learning to do.
She helped with lunch preparations, slicing up mushrooms after cleaning them, stacking finished flatbreads with a dusting of flour between them so that they didn’t stick. She had never seen anyone make flatbreads before. It was fascinating. She longed to try it herself, but didn’t want to ask, because she knew very well she would ruin her first attempts and she had the feeling that there simply wasn’t food to “waste.”
Luncheon was like breakfast had been, except that more of the girls talked to her this time. They seemed relieved when she would say, of this or that task, “I don’t know how, but if you could show me, I’ll try.”
Another of the girls, Helena, was perfectly happy to teach her how to wash clothing, and they spent the afternoon down by another set of rocks, pounding and scrubbing at their garments until they got almost all of stains and dirt out, then spreading them on the bushes to dry.
“Generally,” Helena said, as she scrubbed vigorously at a stain, “each of us washes her own clothing unless someone asks us to do hers. That’s only smart, really—the things we do will put stains in clothing and you feel bad if you can’t get them out of someone else’s, but worse if they give you a look because you didn’t.”
Andie had to laugh at that. Out of a sense of gratitude, Andie had taken Gina’s clothing down with her. The only real problem was that the padded tunic and trews that went under the armor were unbelievably heavy when she hauled them up out of the stream, and though she tried hard to squeeze the water out of them, it was clear they were going to take forever to dry.
“Don’t put those in the direct sun,” Helena said. “If you do, they’ll dry stiff. She’ll never be able to get them back on. They’ll be like slabs of wood.”
“I don’t know how I’m to get them to dry at all, otherwise,” Andie replied.
Helena pondered the problem.
“Let’s try pressing some of the water out with rocks.” The svelte, dark-haired beauty’s idea sounded feasible.
They spread the garments flat on an expanse of rock shelf, then the two of them piled clean rocks on top of the garments, and before they had heaped up too much, there was already water running from under the pile. Encouraged, they continued to pile up stones until there was no more sign of squeezed-out water. Tumbling the rocks aside, Andie picked up the tunic. It was much lighter, and barely damp.
With that problem solved, they left the clothes drying—who was here to steal them, after all?—and trudged up to the fortress.
Only to discover Gina waiting for them at the top of the trail. “The dragons want another conference,” she said. “We’re meeting in the courtyard. I think—” She hesitated. “I think they want us all to do something about the situation in Acadia.”
Andie looked at her, round-eyed. “Do you think we actually can?” she asked doubtfully. “You’re the only Warrior. Where would we get an army?”
Gina shrugged. “Let’s hear what they have to say first.”
Once again, Andie found herself in the ruined courtyard with the two dragons reclining in the middle and all their former “victims” arrayed along the edges. And now the thoughts that she had been trying to keep out of her mind all day came charging to the fore again.
And with them the distress that she had tried to hide. Because perhaps it wasn’t as bad as it had appeared last night. Perhaps the dragons, after talking more with the fox, had decided that Cassiopeia was not to blame, that she had been under some sort of spell. That she still was. That it was all Solon’s fault. Andie could readily believe it was all Solon’s fault.
“My brother and I have been having a discussion,” said Peri, when Helena and Andie had taken seats on a couple of fallen columns, and Gina had taken up a position, leaning with crossed arms against what was left of a wall. “This situation in your land, Princess, is intolerable.”
She grimaced. “Yes, but—”
“I wish to ask you some questions, please,” Peri continued. “I keep a detailed chronicle of the information I receive when I negotiate our trades with the Wyrding Folk. I went back over it today, looking for some clues. Now, how familiar are you with the arrangements between the traders and the Crown?”
“Fairly,” she replied, nonplussed. What could that have to do with anything they’d been discussing?
He nodded with evident satisfaction. “The Wyrding Folk seem to be under the impression that most of the wealth of your Crown comes from fees and taxes on those traders who use your port, which is the only safe anchorage for quite some ways up and down the coastline.” He peered keenly down his long nose at her.
“That’s quite accurate, to a point,” she replied thoughtfully. “Though, there is another source of income that no one really likes to talk about, and that is the income from wrecks. The Queen gets one-third of everything that is gleaned off the shoreline after a wreck. Unless, of course, it’s shoreline belonging to the Crown—then she gets all of it.”
Peri blinked. His eyes held a furtive greenish light in their depths. Or was that only the effect of the sun? “Now that,” he said, “is interesting. So. If, say, the weather along the shores of Acadia began to worsen, the Queen would benefit no matter what. Those traders seeking to avoid the port and the taxes and fees by landing somewhere and smuggling their goods in would suddenly find they were losing ships to storms. The Queen would profit by what washed ashore, and profit again when these traders elected to stop trying to avoid the taxes. True?”
“Well,” Andie replied. “Yes.”
She was beginning to feel sick again. She did not like where this was going. Not at all. Because—
Because it was beginning to look as if either Solon had gotten complete control over everything her mother said and did, like a puppeteer, or—
—her mother was complicit in the whole dragon business.
Including trying to kill her own daughter.
Because Solon himself did not have nearly as much to do with the trade negotiations as Cassiopeia did. They bored him, for one thing, or so he said. For another, the Queen liked to have them firmly and completely under her control. And hers alone.
“The Wyrding Folk tell me that the weather has, in fact, worsened significantly. So much so that the current storms outmatch anything in their memories and records.”
Since this seemed to be a statement and not a question, Andie simply nodded.
“So, can you tell me if the Queen has been renegotiating her arrangements with the traders of late?”
Andie’s mouth dropped open at that question. Suddenly she was putting together a great many answers in her own mind that were making her even sicker at heart than she had been before this.
No, she moaned in her mind. Oh no, please not… But her teacher in logic had been ruthless, and if there was one thing he had taught her it was that a question or a train of thought must be pursued to its likeliest conclusion, no matter how unpleasant.
Except that the word unpleasant was not nearly strong enough.
“Yes…she’s raising the port fees. But—” she shook her head “—there’s more, far more to it than that. This bad weather is doing some awful things to the fisherfolk,” she continued, feeling more ill with every word. “And to the farmers and herdsmen along the coastline. The fishermen are not able to go out as often, and people are losing crops and livestock.”
“But the profit to the Queen from her agrarian folk and fisherfolk is minimal, compared to that from the traders, is it not so?” Peri said in veiled triumph. His head was up, and his cheek-frills fanned.
Andie bit her lip. She was seeing more than she wanted to see. “Much less.”
“And if the Queen is aware that her Adviser is a Magician—”
“Oh, she knows,” the fox piped up, from where he was curled, quite comfortably, in Cleo’s lap. “She counts on it. He does things to people that she wants to give way to her. I don’t know what else he does, but I know he does that. I’ve listened to her give the orders, and I’ve even seen her watch while he does the magic.”
“Did you ever see him work weather magic?” Peri asked with great care, clearly enunciating every word.
“Weather magic?” The fox’s ears flattened a moment as he concentrated, then his ears came up again. “Yes. Yes, at least once.”
Peri’s eyes blazed. “One of the most common magical workings is weather magic,” he said with a certain grim elation. “Clearly he knows how to do it. If he is manipulating the weather along the coast—”
“At her orders,” Andie said, feeling dizzy, because she knew in her heart that Solon must be doing just that. Too many pieces were falling into place now for her to be able to pretend that the Queen was Solon’s puppet. All the reports she had written. Line after line that had proved to her mother that her own daughter was too dangerous and too intelligent—
“And now I think I know why she wanted to be rid of me. I—I pointed this out to her. Told her how the weather was worsening and how the farmers and fishermen were suffering because of it. And I saw the records of the gleanings from the wrecks—they’ve easily doubled in the past decade. Easily.”
And she felt horrible. Because while things were hard for the farmers, herders, and fishermen, no one on shore had died. But men had died in those wrecks. Many men. And her mother knew that.
With a growing sense of horror she recalled the look on her mother’s face whenever the tallies from wrecks were brought in.
Satisfaction.
Andie had dismissed that then, although it had made her uneasy. She could not dismiss it now. It had been bad enough to think that her mother felt satisfaction over something that had cost the deaths of innocent sailors and traders, but the Queen could perhaps be excused for not thinking of that at the time, and seeing only the revenue. They were not, after all, her sailors. She would not see the roster of the lost. No widows would petition her for some form of pension.
But thinking—knowing—that the Queen had willfully allowed the storms to be summoned that sank those ships, and had only smiled when the fruits of that crime were brought to her doorstep—that was a different matter.
That was murder. Cold-blooded murder.
And that was something terrible to contemplate. So terrible that it was all she could do to sit there and let the debate go on around her as her mind went over the pattern of deception and nightmare that Cassiopeia had woven into the tapestry that was Acadia.
The Queen of Acadia had plotted the deaths of innocents whose only crime was that they were following the orders of others who were attempting to evade onerous taxes. And in fact—since Cassiopeia had the sailing schedules for all the ships coming into and out of the harbor…
Well, it was entirely possible she had even plotted the destruction of complete innocents—those who had paid their duties and taxes, and who just happened to have valuable cargo aboard that would float. What next?
Anyone and anything that gets in her way. Like me.
Andie sat there in a daze. Once in a while Peri would ask her a question and she would reply with something—it hardly mattered what, since he seemed satisfied with whatever answer he got. It was just so hard to think that all this time, the Queen had been—
“Very well,” Adam boomed, startling her. “I don’t think any of us have to debate this any longer. The Queen of Acadia is unfit to rule. Her Adviser may or may not be the cause of her current behavior—the fox says not, and I am inclined to believe the beast—but there is no doubt that she has abandoned the responsibility of a monarch to care for her people first, last and always.”
Reluctantly Andie looked up and nodded. Peri sighed gustily.
Adam glanced at him and snorted. “You know very well where this is going.”
“Yes,” Peri said with resignation. “I do.”
Adam stood up to his full height and fanned his wings. “It is our duty as the descendants of the line of Sardonyx and Jasper, the first Dragons of the Light, to combat injustice and tyranny where we find it. Ladies, our course is clear. We must remove the Queen of Acadia from her throne.”
Gina grinned. But Andie felt as if she had just turned to stone.
“We are going to war. Who goes with us?” Adam demanded.
There was stunned silence. “You and what army?” asked Cleo, the first to break it.
Adam, surprisingly, laughed. “Peri and I are an army,” he pointed out. “But I have been flying over the capital quite a bit now, and I have to say that it would not really take an ‘army’ as such to get into the Palace. We don’t need to lay siege to the city. In fact, we don’t really want to. What we need is to get into the Palace and take the Queen and Solon. That doesn’t require a very large force. In fact, with Peri and myself flying people in, it could be done with as few as a dozen, maybe two.”
Gina had taken out a knife and was studiously sharpening it. At that, she looked up and directly into Adam’s eyes. “I’m a Champion,” she said shortly. “This is something no Champion could turn his or her back on. You have me.”
“Ha!” he said, and that is when Thalia stood up.
“This is our land,” she said. “And if that isn’t enough, we’ve been made victims, too. I don’t know if you can turn me into a real fighter quickly enough, but you have me.”
“And me!” exclaimed Helena, jumping to her feet, shortly followed by all the rest.
That left only Andie, who felt herself flush and looked at her feet as all eyes came to rest on her. The silence grew heavier and more uncomfortable with every passing moment. It was Gina who broke it.
“Princess, we understand, she’s your mother. You—”
“Actually,” Andie said, looking up, her mouth twisted in a grimace, “you don’t understand. Not at all.”
“We probably don’t,” said Peri.
“This—this is—horrible,” she managed to choke out. “What she’s done, the innocent lives she’s taken the—I can’t even begin—” She faltered to a stop. She stared at her feet. The silence was thick enough to cut. I have to do something. This is my bloodline they’re talking about. I have a responsibility, too….
There was just one rather large problem. “Without these—” she took the lenses off and flourished them, bitterly “—I’m blind. Even if you could actually train me to do some kind of fighting, which I frankly doubt, the first person that breaks these things turns me from an asset into a liability. A hostage. I’d like to help you, but I’m useless to you.”
She had no idea until the words were out of her mouth how much she meant them—nor how badly they hurt. But they did. Once again, she was useless. She had spent her entire life being useless, it seemed. Nothing she was good at made any real difference to anyone.
“But, Andromeda—” Peri exclaimed. “You are the most important person in this scheme!”
“I—what?” she said. “You must be joking.”
Peri shook his massive head. “On the contrary. You are the only person here who has actually been inside the Palace. You know everything there is to know about it. Without that, we can’t even begin to mount an attack, now, can we?”
“At least not the kind of attack we can manage with as few people as we have, and as untrained or half trained,” Adam agreed. “You are the key to our plan.”
Of all the things she had heard today this was the most astonishing. She was important. She was vital. She who had never been anything to anyone—
“Besides,” Gina said with a grin, “I can teach you to use something that you won’t have to get in close to use. A sling. Believe me, I’ve seen a good slingman take down seasoned fighters many a time.”
Andie raised her chin and looked into Peri’s eyes. “Then you have me,” she said, but could not help adding, “for what it’s worth.”