Page 48 of Dragons of the Great Wyves: Fire and Song
The Scottish washerwoman was a few paces from Yuánchi but bent almost double as if the ground were more fascinating than a dragon. She straightened when Elizabeth arrived, then dropped to a low curtsy. “Banrigh nan Dràgon.”
“It is good to see you again,” Elizabeth said, smiling.
“Aye, lassie.” She rose and grinned back. “Who’d have thought you’d be astride this beast? But I knew ye from the first when I saw ye commandin’ your drake.”
“You did,” Elizabeth admitted.
“Your dragon is turnin’ black. ’Tis nae good. Black is war.”
The woman held out her hand, offering something from the ground. A scarlet scale. Others were scattered in the grass.
Elizabeth took the scale from the woman’s wizened fingers. Her reply had the sound of a quote, but unknown to me. “?‘A cage dusted with fallen scales, like stars.’?”
“Aye, ma’am. That was the story. I don’t know of dragons, but I know a draca sickened by a fouled binding.”
Elizabeth nodded. The washerwoman curtsied again and hurried away, leaving Elizabeth and me alone.
The secret I had kept, from what I thought to be pity, now burdened me. “Yuánchi still speaks. He spoke to me. Either you do not hear him, or he does not speak to you.”
Elizabeth was still a long time, turning the fallen scale in her fingers. I saw the voids in the dragon’s coat now, exposed spots of unhealthy leathery hide.
“Yuánchi is the dragon of healing,” she said. “He was never meant to bind the wyfe of war. I am poisoning him.”
“You cannot know that.”
“I do know that. Yuánchi has seen a hundred human empires rise and fall. Our lives are as fleeting as sunbeams to him, yet he will not survive binding me.” She looked up at me, her brown eyes level and serious. For all that Elizabeth was a woman of humor and wit, this seriousness—this decisiveness—was the real Elizabeth of old. “Fènnù makes it worse. She is twisting my mind, and her venom flows through me to Yuánchi. I must escape her.”
“How? She outflew Yuánchi at Pemberley.”
Elizabeth studied the southern horizon. Ponderous thunderheads were swelling. “If we go north…” There was a silence. “Would you come with me?”
Fidelis et audax. The answer should be simple.
Instead, I asked, “Why north?”
“Fènnù is drawn to war, to the south. If we go north, we escape her.”
“And… hide?” The word reeked of dishonor.
She abandoned the horizon to watch me. “What happened to ‘I will stay with you’?”
I could feel my loyalties tearing, one half bound to Elizabeth, the other to England and the war, to trust in Georgiana and duty to those risking their lives.
“We need the great wyves together to heal the song and end the blight.” My words had started wooden, but my conviction returned. “Georgiana has seen it. She says the war and the blight are connected.”
“She is right. The blight is subtler than blackened plants and rot.”
“Emma and Knightley are retrieving the amulet. It is a dangerous venture, but Emma is strong. She will succeed, and then we will have two of the three great items. We must be prepared to act when we find the third. England’s survival is at stake.” I realized we were having a coherent conversation—planning together—and that I had never asked a crucial question. “The third item, the one made of claw, is a flute. Do you know where it is?”
Her overly pale skin blanched under the healing sunburn. As if from a great distance, she recited:
“To sound our claim,
the three wyves came:
Of healing, wise.
Of song, who cries…”
