Page 122 of Dragons of the Great Wyves: Fire and Song
“Iwill take the black dragon,” she said. The strength around her surged as she grabbed for the dagger on my thigh.
The perfumer, though, was no wyfe of war. She was an aristocrat who rose through the French court, ruthless surely, but fighting her battles with beauty, intrigue, and rumor.
Left-handed, I caught her grasping hand easily, pinioning her wrist. She gave a perplexed cry, tugging ineffectually, unsure how to respond to physical force, let alone pain. Then she rallied, summoning her crawlers—
“Mary sends her regards,” I said and punched her with my right hand, a hooked blow that flattened the side of her ridiculous bonnet against her temple. It was not a hard blow, not the shoulder-spine-hip alignment that delivers lethal force, but it would have been enough to stun a strong man. The perfumer’s delicate head rocked, and she collapsed in a limp heap of stained satin, laced petticoats, and sprawling jewels.
The watching officers bustled importantly, gripping the hilts of their swords, but they did not draw them. They waited for their emperor.
“Your resistance changes nothing,” Napoleon said. “The black dragon has seeded the blight. England is doomed, only slower.”
I drew the dagger, a whisper of razor-edged dragon tooth, and he became very still.
“You searched for the great artifacts,” I said. “Your agents stole Gramr.” I lifted the serrated edge between our gazes, a rippling midnight line that dividedour faces, left and right, thesis and antithesis. “But you never held it. Touch it now. Touch the blade. That is the path to its power.”
His eyes wondering, compelled, Napoleon rested a fingertip on the flat of the blade.
“Nothing,” I told him. “You feel no strength. No connection to the wisdom of the past.” I withdrew the dagger and pointed the hilt toward the fallen perfumer, mistress of poisonous crawlers, then to Fènnù behind me. “The power you covet is beyond your reach because you are not a wyfe.”
Fènnù’s relentless anger flared when I drew the dagger, a whirlpool around my mind. Now, she spoke:Rise, my queen. Seek vengeance. Cast down our enemy.
If grief is a wound, a laceration that pulses blood and makes us cry, then mourning is that first tender scar, our torn soul knitted clumsily together only to discover a hollow where something precious remains forever lost.
Your queen is dead, I thought. It was a simple thought, but Fènnù’s churning anger snagged and, for a moment, lessened.You grieve for her. I grieve for my mother. But grief should not be savored. Grief should heal.
You are my queen, Fènnù insisted.Our vengeance will reclaim your great empire.
“Your queen is gone,” I said aloud. “The empire you dream of will never come.”
I had spoken to Fènnù, but Napoleon heard, and his face clouded.
Yuánchi’s binding broke into my mind, melting the icy walls of Fènnù’s strength.
Lizzy!Emma’s voice was a dazzling sun. Yuánchi was much closer now, his binding brighter, but Emma had changed as well. Her voice was rich with loss and fortitude and certainty.The wyves must gather. Find us. Find Yuánchi.
I sheathed the dagger and left.
35
HARBINGERS
MARY
On shuddering wings,Yuánchi carried us past London.
With Lizzy gone, I rode in front. That choice was practical—I was able to converse with Yuánchi—but even while my heart grieved for Mamma, my pulse quickened when I took my place. We spend our lives plodding earthly paths of triviality and compromise. What could be a more transcendent remembrance than tears in the limitless sky?
But when we rose through the sheeting wind, I felt self-conscious. I distrusted eminence in others and detested it for myself, yet I was the black-clad figurehead on a scarlet-and-onyx dragon, a braggart Nike with flapping, lank hair.
My damaged spectacles were unsteady; I used one hand to hold them against the gusts. My lap belt was cinched tight, so my other hand rested lightly on the saddle’s pommel for balance. Georgiana sat behind me, riding double in the front saddle and strapped in with an auxiliary belt. Her arms hugged my waist, squeezing hard whenever we tipped. Mr. Darcy rode in the back saddle, out of reach, out of hearing, and perhaps beyond caring. After Lizzy pushed him off Fènnù, he had limped back to us dripping and unwilling to speak.
One passenger had no qualms about the flight. The song draca had protested when I coaxed him into my dress pocket, but he was delighted now, his sapphire-beaded head poking out to admire the view.
Georgiana pressed her chin to my neck and shouted, “Has Emma said anything more?”
I shook my head. Yuánchi had told me the wyfe of healing called us—that was why we attempted this flight—but nothing more.
Yuánchi’s launch had been ragged, and we flew low. London’s packed roofs whipped barely beneath his tucked claws. But even a struggling dragon is swift, and the landscape soon greened to woods and farmland. Then in a blink, the greenery vanished, and we were crossing a funereal expanse of ice-ravaged, black-misted earth. I had seen this destruction before—Fènnù’s breath had struck parts of London during her rampage—but this was a mile wide. Were those splayed branches a flattened forest? That level stretch, a road? Those still lumps, the bodies of soldiers?
