Page 128 of Dragons of the Great Wyves: Fire and Song
I looked at the perfumer’s unconscious form, and for all that a part of me wanted her punished, I was frightened by what would happen if Lizzy returned and found her.
“Tie her to a tree,” I decided. “Lydia had the same affinity to crawlers. Even without drugs, they… respected her. They will not harm her.”
Georgiana looked disappointed by that, but we dragged the perfumer to a tree. She groaned insensible French while I pulled her hands behind it and knotted her silk scarf tight around her wrists.
Georgiana went to examine the perfumer’s monstrous, saddled creature. It hunkered down patiently, presumably watching us with its inscrutable, insectile eyes.
I sat on my heels, immersed in fading venomous scent and overcome by strangeness. The perfumer’s emerald gown was tailored like court attire, the stitching so fine as to be invisible, the embroidery couched with goldwork. Her neck, lolling to one side, had the refined pallor of a lady who arduously avoided the sun. That must have been a challenge while flying around and killing people. Perhaps that explained her oversized bonnet.
“She murdered the colonel as well,” I said. “He had dreams for a life after the war.” Confused emotions chased through my head. “I am very tired of having to fight people who hate and hurt others.”
Georgiana came to give me a hand up, then her face lifted with an air of listening. “Fènnù is coming.” She shivered. “It may have to be us, you know. If Emma is the only one who can raise the dragon of song, we have to bind Fènnù.” She rubbed her arms. “When Fènnù trapped my mind at Pemberley, I was terrified. I felt her crawling into my veins, spreading what you said. Hate and hurt.”
“Her mind was broken by evil people. She is a victim.”
Perhaps the perfumer was a victim too, or perhaps she had always wished to hurt others. Looking at her swelling bruises, then her wasted hips, a symptom of her drug, I felt pity, and guilt for offering her pity.
“We should go…” Georgiana began, then she asked, “Why are the draca so excited?”
The song draca were flashing along the rock outcrop, their wingtips all but grazing it. It was Bargate stone, common in this area, buttery yellow with reddish streaks of iron. The perfumer had been examining it when we met.
Bargate was a sandy stone, but here it gleamed as if polished.
Puzzled, I backed up a few steps, careful to avoid lingering crawlers. The glassy finish extended as far as I could see, the reddish streaks rolling and coiling until they vanished below the weeds and soil.
“I know where the dragon of song is,” I said.
36
BREAK OR BIND
EMMA
I knelt in the grass,holding the amulet in one hand and resting my other on Yuánchi’s muzzle.
The scarlet dragon lay still as death, his fire-bright scales mottled even more with midnight darkness. His sprawled form reminded me of an illustration of a beached whale I was shown as a child. I had cried when that was explained to me, that magnificent creature powerless and doomed outside of its natural domain. Now, I felt the same despair. I could sense the broken song eroding whatever lifeblood gave draca their miraculous vitality.
I squeezed the amulet again, closed my eyes, and thought,Heal. Nothing happened. I may as well have thought,Turn the moon to cheese. After all this time, even clutching an artifact held by my own ancestor, my gift of healing was merely a window to suffering. I felt a harsh envy for Lady Anne Darcy, so skilled a healer that she had gifted her ability to me through her long-dead wyvern, even if that benefit had been short-lived.
But if my gift was a cruel window, it was a spectacular one. Yuánchi’s binding was a scarlet tether surrounded by a huge aura. It stretched into the distance like a dazzling beam of sunset. And that was different from before. When I first met the Darcys, I had been unable to touch Lizzy; their binding was too bright. Now, immersed in that power, I felt wonder.
Wonder, and curiosity. I saw draca bindings as the color of their draca. Yuánchi’s true binding was pure scarlet; what I had seen as black streaks were foreign strands wrapped around it like a choking vine.
But even the scarlet core was… flawed…
Yuánchi’s blind head stirred weakly.The wyfe of war comes.The broken song surrounds her.
“Lizzy is coming,” I called to Mr. Darcy, not sure whether to convey the rest. He nodded and rolled his shoulders like a man preparing for battle. Perhaps the rest was assumed.
Nervous, I stood. I knew Lizzy had heard my message, but she and Fènnù should have arrived long ago, and I worried about the delay. I ran my fingers over the burrs and dirt on my clothes. Strange that those imperfections no longer mattered. They seemed proper, a sign of life, of taking risks and caring. But in the back of my mind, a new unease lurked. My obsession with the imagined miasma had been replaced with something real: the spreading blight.
Harriet and Mr. Knightley came to stand with me. The three of us linked arms and watched the sky.
“There have been dreadful moments today,” Harriet said, “but wonderful ones, too. I am thankful we returned. You saved all those girls, and I know every one of them.”
“That would not have happened without you,” I said. “We would not even have the amulet.”
“There,” Harriet said and pointed.
