Page 168 of Miss Bennet's Dragon
The man sprawled hard onto the floor, and the broccworm’s fiery breath stopped. The ceiling above flashed into a sheet of orange fire, then extinguished itself to oily smoke.
Lizzy walked forward to stand over the man. Smoldering curls of burnt paint fell around her like black snowflakes tipped with sparks. They alighted on her hair and dress, cooling and staining her shoulders with ash.
The broccworm jumped onto the man’s chest, snarling. Unnatural blue flame flickered with each growl.
The man drew his pistol, but the tykeworm ran from Lizzy’s side to catch the man’s wrist in obsidian-black teeth. The tyke was small, no bigger than a Yorkshire terrier, but even the smallest draca has teeth sharper than razors and harder than steel.
“If you wish to keep your hand,” Lizzy said, “you should drop that.”
The man splayed his fingers, and the pistol clattered to the floor.
Even the scuffling men by the wall had frozen at the spectacle. Now, Mr. Darcy rolled their cowed opponent onto his belly. Mr. Knightley produced a coil of peculiarly fine string from his pocket and wound it around the man’s hands.
Mr. Darcy joined his wyfe. He kicked the discarded pistol across the floor. The broccworm, tyke, and roseworm spaced themselves around the terrified man’s head.
“Are you hurt?” Mr. Darcy asked, his voice tight with concern.
Lizzy looked up. She seemed impossibly calm. “I am unhurt, but…” She turned to a window. To the north. “Yuánchi heard me. He comes. I must stop him.”
Scarlet flared and faded in my mind. This time, I felt the thread of their binding stretching far, far to the north. How could a distant draca feel so powerful? And there was something more… a vitality in the binding that tugged at my soul. A familiarity that drew me.
Roiling, acrid smoke swirled through the room. Women coughed and sobbed. Harriet was comforting a crying woman beside me.
I remembered the maid at the door. I had seen her injured. I saw her fall.
I ran to the entrance. The miasma flooded the floor, clutching at my shoes with every step. The maid, a woman of forty or fifty, was a senseless heap in the doorway. I knelt by her, my hands trembling.
I had to help her. Save her. I placed my gloved fingers on her unconscious brow, as useless as when I had comforted Papa.
But here, the Darcys’ scarlet binding glimmered around Lizzy, tantalizing and potent. My soul reached for it, but it was ungraspable. Claimed by another.
The miasma surged, colorless pestilence that drowned the world. Awareness fled.
2
ELIZABETH DARCY
LIZZY
“Elizabeth,”my husband said in my ear. “I must speak with the constable.”
I nodded, and Darcy crossed to the constable, joining Mr. Knightley, who had helped subdue the attackers. One attacker had been taken away, but the other lay tied at the constable’s feet. Behind the men, the chill autumn wind gusted through the windows, thrown wide to clear the smoke.
Memories of the attack clicked through my mind as if I were watching a reenactment. The gunmen brought their weapons to bear so slowly. They were fools. I had an eternity to act.
But that was a strange way to think of it. I knew nothing of weapons, other than profoundly disliking them.
My recollection froze at the moment I had commanded the three draca to attack. The sensation hung, bitter in the back of my throat. I had not commanded a draca since I forced the Longbourn drake to stay after Papa’s death. The concept of command repelled me—compelling any creature was wrong—but beneath that, a rawer emotion lurked. Exhilaration.
Why had this happened?
I crossed the room and sank to my heels by the man who shot at me. He lay on his side, glaring at me with an uneven squint.
Above us, the gentlemen’s conversation fell silent. Three pairs of trousered legs and polished shoes turned in my direction.
“Why did you try to kill me?” I said.
“That bleedin’ Negro got ’is hands all over me!” The man launched a spittle-spewing tirade, although at Mr. Knightley, not me. Five months ago, I would have known few of the words, and fled blushing from those. Now I had sterner standards from my visits to the slums of London. The desperate poor were usually polite, even starving in a wealthy city, but the men who earned enough for drink were unpredictable, some admirable, others as vile as this one.
