This man was Yelangese.
I retreated one step, praying Ascelin would not try to get a mouthful of my arm. Of all the juveniles for me to put at my back, he was both the best and the worst, depending on how he chose to act. “Please,” I said. “I just came to make certain they were well—” This in Scirling; I could not have answered him in Yelangese if I wanted to. But the point was not to communicate so much as to delay.
He was not fooled. He came forward, far enough for me to make out his features and see him frowning at me. Another question, no more comprehensible than the first—but I suspect, based on his tone, that he demanded to know what I was doing.
A moment later, he had his answer.
I had, behind the cover of my body, worked free the hook that held the cage shut. Upon his words, I yanked the door open and stood well clear.
For Ascelin inside that cage, the man’s sudden forward leap looked precisely like an attack. And so it was: one aimed at me, but my feisty charge showed no inclination to differentiate.
He got a mouthful of the man’s upraised sword arm, preventing the downward stroke. The man howled and thrashed at him, ineffectually at first, then jamming his thumb into Ascelin’s eye. This indeed persuaded the drake to pull back; but he took a portion of flesh with him, and the sword fell with a clatter. After that it became even more gruesome, and I retained barely enough wit to flee out the door and close it behind me. The window, I prayed, would be too small for Ascelin to climb through.
Our soldiers and labourers soon had the fires under control; the flames had not taken too firm hold before they were noticed. Only the tree was still burning brightly by then, and that only because it was judged a lesser priority. I found Andrew outside the barracks, and brushed away his exclamations over my half-clad state. “I need help with the juveniles,” I said. “One of them, at least. I may have set him loose, and I cannot get him back into his cage on his own.”
“Set him loose?” Andrew repeated, staring. “Why on earth—and in your nightgown—Isabella, what the hell is going on?”
“I will show you,” I said. Which was, more than anything, an expression of shock: the heat of the moment having faded, I was now shaking, and trying very hard not to think about what I had done to that man. No one can witness as many dragons hunting as I have without acquiring a strong stomach; but there is a great deal of difference between watching a gazelle be crunched in a dragon’s jaws and watching a man suffer the same fate. I had seen men killed in such ways before, but I hope I will never become accustomed.
What my brother said when the door to the room of cages was opened, I will not print here. Suffice it to say that it was very foul and very appalling. I waited outside while the men got the young drake under control; this was not terribly difficult, as food made him logy and slow. Once he was back in his cage, I went with Andrew to report the matter to Pensyth.
“Good God, woman,” the colonel said when I was done explaining. “I heard the story of what you did in Keonga, but—damn me, I didn’t think it was true.”
I flinched. He sounded horrified, not impressed; and well he might be. What I had done here was not admirable, however effective it might have been. The man’s screams were echoing in my memory, and I had grown very cold.
Fortunately Andrew noticed this latter. “God, Isabella—here, let me fetch you a blanket.” Pensyth and I sat in silence, him staring at me, me trying not to meet his gaze, until Andrew came back with one of the scratchy blankets from the soldiers’ quarters. I clutched this around me gratefully, more for warmth than modesty. Desert nights could be chill, even in summer, and all the heat had long since gone out of me.
“Sir,” Andrew said once I was covered, “Wardinge says we got one of them. Problem is, he doesn’t speak Scirling or Akhian.”
His words roused me from my half-trance. “Colonel, if you do not have anyone who speaks Yelangese…” Pensyth made a gesture which I interpreted as admission that he did not. “The sheikh’s brother does. Suhail ibn Ramiz. And I imagine the Aritat will want to be involved in this investigation.”
I also imagined Pensyth would like to keep them out of it—but he didn’t stand much chance of that. His jaw tightened, and he looked over my shoulder to Andrew. My brother must have nodded or shrugged, because the colonel said, “Thank you. For that and for your… quick thinking in defense of this place. I’ll have Captain Hendemore escort you back to your room.”
Ordinarily I would have objected at being shuffled out of the way, but not this time. I took the blanket with me, and curled up tight beneath my covers until sleep finally came.
Despite my disturbed night, I woke early, out of habit. And it was a good thing I did, because no matter what had happened in the night, the business of the House of Dragons must go on.
The labourers were feeding the drakes. We tried to approximate their schedule in the wild, supplying them with meat every three days; it just so happened that this was one of their days. I tried not to look at the bloody flesh as the men dropped it in the scales, focusing all my attention on the needle and the notes I made. It was important to know how much each beast ate—even if I would have been happier not recording that Ascelin had no appetite today.
I saw when Suhail arrived, accompanied by a number of other Akhian men, but made no effort to join them. I had no wish to observe the prisoner’s interrogation, and trusted that I would learn the results in due course. When the bare minimum of my duties was done, I went and sat on one of the walls, letting the hot summer breeze ruffle my scarf and the sun sink into my bones.
Andrew found me there. “Are you trying to roast yourself?”
“It is the one place in Dar al-Tannaneen I will not be interrupted,” I said. “Or when I am—as now—I can see it coming, and prepare.”
He settled next to me, back against the stone of the parapet. “What’s on your mind?”
It was a peculiar relief not to have him ask whether I was all right. We both knew I was not, and needn’t pretend. “What Pensyth said last night. About what I did in Keonga.”
“The battle, you mean.”
I was sitting with my knees drawn up to my chest: not a very ladylike pose. I wrapped the fingers of one hand tight around the other and looked away. “After you cut that man’s throat outside the Banu Safr camp, it bothered me a great deal. Seeing you kill someone. The more I think about it, though… no one died when I used the sea-serpent to bring down the caeliger. But in Vystrana I provoked the rock-wyrms into attacking the boyar and his men. In Mouleen we put fangfish into the water to slow the Labane, and last night I let Ascelin out of his cage to savage that man.”
Andrew—ordinarily the most voluble of my brothers—held his peace while I marshaled the words and got them out. “I have not killed anyone directly. But time and time again, I use dragons to do the work for me.”
“They aren’t weapons,” Andrew said. “They’re animals. Doing what they do. You just… make use of that.”
“Is it any different? It might even be worse. A sword or a gun is made for killing, and does not care if its owner uses it thus. These are living creatures. They have other purposes besides murder—and they are not mine to use.”
Andrew picked at his fingernails. “You keep putting yourself in dangerous situations, Isabella. You have to defend yourself somehow.” He hesitated, chewing on his lower lip. “Do you… want me to teach you how to shoot a gun?”
I had not expected the offer. I had not expected anything at all; I was simply wallowing in the realization of my own deeds, without much thought for what I would do going forward. Andrew spoke with the air of a man who knew he would be banished from family holidays forevermore if word got out of what he’d done… but he was willing.