Page 86 of Dragon Fate (Age of Fire 6)

The princedoms were full of such stories—not really histories, not really legends, but something in between.

“The librarians should really catalog them. There must be hundreds of these little tales.”

“I fear we’ll hear all of them before we find Nissa, or anyone with real authority to do something.”

Outside a city that was fragrant with peppers and more exotic spices and flowers, so much so it was almost dragonlike, they finally received news of her.

“Ah, yes, the Hidden Widow,” said a spice-trader with a good knowledge of Parl who’d been sent out to talk to them. “She was once of the Ghioz court. She resides in the country at the Peacock Palace.”

He supplied them with directions, though they’d spotted the building from the air.

The Peacock Palace had a ragged beauty to it. The jungle had encroached across the old walls that ringed the great house, filling fields with vines and grasses. The white—what else?—house stood besieged by green, three floors of balconies, verandas, and shaded walkways so that the air might run free while the sun and rain were kept out. It smelled to AuRon of chrysanthemum, which was growing in profusion in old pools.

He heard a plate fall and break from somewhere within the house as they approached, landing outside the gates and climbing carefully into the grounds.

A dark woman with two neat pleats of gray appeared on a balcony just above the main door. She wore a simple sleeveless dress with a black fabric belt wrapped and knotted about her waist. She reminded AuRon of both Naf—with her height and grave bearing—and Hieba—with her large eyes, elegant chin, and thick hair—so that it pained him to look at her. Just a little.

Wistala called greetings in Parl, but the woman just smiled and spread her hands as though helpless.

“Were you once known as Nissa?” AuRon asked, in the language of the Dairuss. He’d learned a little of it from Naf and more when he’d served in Dairuss.

She looked shocked and answered similarly: “That is the name my father and mother gave me, yes. I have not heard it spoken in a long time, dragon.”

“Your flowers are beautiful,” Wistala said in the same tongue, though with difficulty.

“They keep the bugs away.”

You know the tongue of the Dairuss? he thought to her.

It is similar enough to Hypatian that I can get by, she returned.

“Are you also the person they call the Hidden Widow in the city?” he asked.

“I am a widow. I keep within my home,” she replied. “There are rumors I am much wealthier than our own Prince Samikan and the rumors attract thieves like flies coming to spoiled meat.”

“I’m sorry to hear you are widowed. I will carry the message back to your mother, if you like. Your father has died. He was a good friend of mine.”

“He told me many stories of a gray dragon. I take it you are AuRon,” she said.

“This is my sister, Wistala.”

“I, too, am sorry you lost your husband,” Wistala said.

Nissa clasped her hands in front of her. “No need for regret. It was a marriage of political power. The Red Queen got her mated pairs of Rocs, a trainer, and his apprentice, and in this poor province an impoverished family gained a connection with the high of Ghioz and a dowry large enough to restore the family fortunes.”

“We came all this way to find someone in the princedoms of importance who would listen to us. The Dragon Empire is preparing for war with your people.”

“Once I might have been deemed important,” Nissa said. “In the days when the Red Queen ruled in Ghioz and the princedoms were eager for her good regard. Since Ghioz fell, I’m little more than a foreign oddity. I tutor students in the Hypatian tongue these days. I’ve almost forgotten my own, but they are similar enough—”

She stopped, then started again. “I would invite you in, but I don’t believe you’d even fit in the entrance hall. I hope you don’t mind if I ask you to remain outside. I don’t know what food I have that would satisfy a dragon appetite. We do have some cooking lard. My father said you needed animal fats for your fire.”

“We will manage,” AuRon said.

They ended up eating together in Nissa’s back garden. There were stones planted and mortared together between the trees, and the jungle had not yet succeeded in breaking the stones up. Her servants never left the house, so she had to bring them a meager meal of fat and soup-bones herself. Every now and then AuRon caught a glimpse of a face watching them. She sketched out her life as a young girl, part hostage and part student, in the Queen’s palace. Though Ghioz had fallen, she wasn’t sure that the Red Queen had fallen with it. When pressed, she told this story as the day birds quieted—a pair of peacocks retreated up a tree—and the night birds began to speak:

“The Red Queen told me a story once. She was an enchantress of the Ironriders and lived in a hut woven out of living trees, elves who’d returned to tree-hood and been enslaved to her will. It walked about their lands. She said wherever it went the weather turned bad, so it was almost impossible to find.

“The Ironriders feared her, but the very desperate and the very reckless would go to her. Seeking aid. The wretched, she would dismiss or dispose of. If they had wealth or power, she would promise to double it, which she did, but once they had their crowns and gold, she used her aid in their rise against them and they became her slaves, crowns bowing to her and gold washing into her treasury.

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