Page 80 of Dragons of the Great Wyves: Fire and Song
I shook my head. “The black dragon attacked London. She seeks me, but I do not command her.”
“If Helmsdale rises up, it’ll be a hot fire but a short one. There’ll be naught left but ashes to mark our graves. Will ye set that fire, wyfe of war?”
“No,” I said. “I swear it.”
Her grip eased on my arm, and she nodded. “Tomorrow morning, then, we’ll read the stones. Yer husband will hear the truth of the flute.” Her gaze bored into mine. “I think a wyfe of war, and a Bennet besides, already knows the tale.”
She tugged my hand, hustling us through the crowd while tossing over her shoulder, “Hurry up, lass. Time to see how revenge turned out.”
Uneasy, I found Darcy in the crowd and sat beside him on the bench, wrapping my arm in his.
On the stage, Gudrún was cowering before Brynhild.
Sigurd stepped toward them, hands beseeching. “Brynhild, ye wielded the dagger. Ye commanded the dark dragon. Now show a wyfe’s mercy. Spare fair Gudrún, who is but a lass.”
Silence stretched. Brynhild raised something sharp and black above her head, and even though I would know if Gramr were touched, my hand reached to check the hilt was secure.
Brynhild spun and stabbed Sigurd. Darcy started up as if to intervene, his arm stretched in hopeless intercession, but the black point did not strike like a blade—it folded in Brynhild’s hand, a prop. Sigurd, the woman’s husband in life, collapsed in a credible stage death.
Mistress MacLeod strode onto the stage, narrating, “Then Brynhild saw what her fury had wrought. As her love died, she repented, and her sorrow lifted the black dragon’s winter from the land.”
Thin-split kindling was tossed on the half-doused fires. Sun-yellow fire bloomed, and warm light spread.
The audience passed the Wyves’ bannocks hand-to-hand. Each woman tore a burned ray from the breads. Even the elderly wyfe beside me took one with a toothless grin before passing the half-used loaf to me.
Around us, wyves stabbed their husbands with the mock-knives. Young, unmarried women chased young men. They yelled, tripped, and collided. Each stabbed person shuddered their death then miraculously recovered and embraced their attacker. The red-cheeked woman who had played Brynhild caught a bearded young man. He did not put up much of a fight.
The embraces turned passionate. Pairs fled, hand-in-hand—toward houses, into the secluded night. Only the children remained, watching the adults vanish as if this were perfectly normal. Then the older children got up and began collecting plates and cups.
“Are ye nae going to stab yer husband?” the MacLeods’ young daughter asked me. Her parents had rushed off like the rest. I turned the burned knife of bread in my hand, and she explained seriously, “It means yer fond of him, ye ken?”
I nodded that I understood. When I did not immediately disembowel my husband with the crust, she rolled her eyes and trotted off with a bored expression.
My other senses, my draca senses, vibrated. The passion of hidden lovers was like whirlpools churning a rising sea. I closed my eyes. Draca of every breed moved through the village. The iron-dark drake flew in pursuit of the red-cheeked woman and her man, and through his alien mind, their arousal trickled down my spine like hot oil.
“A strange play,” Darcy said. Flushed, I opened my eyes as he continued, “It does not match what we know of Fury and Gramr’s history, nor what I recall of the Völsunga saga, but there are connections. The origin must be Nordic or Germanic…”
“Leave the scholarship to Mary,” I said hoarsely. The draca around us were fueling a sensuous awareness of Darcy’s closeness, of his scent. The two cream-colored firedrakes crisscrossed in the sky above, waiting, watching us, two heated bodies in their vision.
Awkwardly, Darcy raked back his hair. Despite his dry topic, the mood had affected him. His pupils were huge, his pulse quick in his throat.
“Tomorrow,” I said, “Mistress MacLeod will take us to the Pictish stones and tell the story of the flute.” This escape, this pretense, my parade of lies would be exposed. How could it end but disaster?
My despair must have shown on my features, and Darcy’s brow furrowed. “I know you are troubled about the flute. What are you not saying?”
“Quiet,” I whispered and pulled him to me.
25
NEARING LONDON
MARY
Colonel Fremantle,Lord Wellington’s aide-de-camp, and I stood in front of our stopped coach. The road to London stretched ahead, a packed misery beneath a smoke-reddened sun. Tens of thousands were fleeing the city, a northward flood that spilled into the adjacent fields, plowing them to impassible mud.
London’s skyline was visible as low notches on the southern horizon. I compared it to memories from other trips… we were eight miles from the city’s outskirts. After that, it would be two miles to the museum. At least it was on the north side of the city. Chathford House, the Darcys’ London home, was south of the Thames and likely unreachable.
A man staggered by, his lips gray and his arm crudely wrapped in bloody muslin. I dug my nails into my palms and did nothing. Passing this uncountable humanity felt like when Dr. Davenport first walked me through the slums of London. I had wept, and afterward he provided a cup of tea and his first lesson: You cannot help them all. Choose carefully where to spend your strength.
