Page 30 of Golden Queen (Idrigard #1)

Nine

Sleep after that came swiftly. I expected to be plagued with dreams of those pulsing drums, or the horror of learning what that creature Elias had done, or even that spectral skull on Io's face. Instead, I woke up rested after a night of dreamless sleep.

After scrubbing the dark wash from my hair, a feat that took well over an hour of washing and re-washing, I found Tatana in the dressing room.

She was sullen, listless, and complained of a headache, so I promised her I would send breakfast to our chambers and left her to head to the gold room to eat.

Halfway down the corridor, I noticed a guard trailing me. I rolled my eyes at Markus feeling the need to guard my chambers while the fae from Nightfall were in residence.

I resolved to tell him how ridiculous that was, but as I passed through the halls to the main artery of the castle, I noticed there were more guards than usual everywhere.

Io was not at breakfast, a fact I ascertained within seconds of scanning the assembled crowd. I tried to manage my disappointment as I strode toward my customary seat at the head of the long central table.

When I realized that my uncle was missing from his chair as well, I became curious about what was actually happening in the castle.

Markus was never absent from breakfast unless he was away from the city.

He would have canceled the formal meal, rather than allow a large group to assemble out of his vicinity.

I approached his Chief Minister, Donovan Till. "Where is the regent, Donovan?"

"He had urgent business in Gold Harbor, Your Highness," the mousy, brown-haired minister told me, pushing his gold-rimmed glasses up onto his nose.

"What business?" I asked. I knew it must be something urgent to make Markus leave Albiyn during the visit from Nightfall. He was already paranoid that the fae had their sights set on conquering the kingdom. It was not in his nature to turn his back on them when they were in our midst.

"Ships have been sighted off the northern shores, I'm afraid," Donovan said. "The regent fears they may be a scouting party from Penjan, sent to assess our port defenses."

I thought my mouth might be hanging open from the shock of him answering truthfully. I had expected the customary reply: I am afraid you must ask your uncle if you wish to know the details.

"Is my uncle shoring up our defenses in Gold Harbor, then?" I asked, hoping to capitalize on his unusual level of disclosure.

"He is organizing a fleet to intercept the ships, though he will not go himself. He wants to ensure that the enemy cannot report anything back to Penjan."

I nodded, already formulating another question, but Donovan bowed before I could ask it. "If you'll excuse me, Your Highness, I have an inordinate amount of work that needs to be done." I nodded again and he left, striding across the gold room quickly.

I greeted the party from Radune as the servants placed my food on the table.

Master Juriae, I already knew of course.

He had been heading the Radune party for years as they came to negotiate trade agreements.

I had always liked the master. He was friendly and respectful, and he never let his gaze stray to my chest as we spoke.

He introduced me to several others in his party. A trio of human women—a few of his councilors from the Radune city board, and his wife, Cazmiri, a ravishing, sloe-eyed middle-aged woman who was on her first trip to Windemere.

Cazmiri, I learned, was a mage from Maldur, a territory in the northernmost reaches of Nightfall where bitter cold tundra met rocky mountains leading into the frozen seas.

She was friendly and warm, and seemed to take a particular interest in the possibility of a strong alliance between Nightfall and Windemere.

Breakfast with the Radune party ended up being reasonably enjoyable, but I was anxious to see my dragon. She and Io had pride of place in my waking mind since I'd opened my eyes that morning. And since Taiger was also absent from the meal, I resolved to go and look for them after lunch.

When lunchtime came, and Io and Taiger were both still absent, I got the nerve to ask Master Juriae if the Darkwatch mages had left the castle.

"I think they had some business in the city, but young Taiger is in his quarters waiting for you to call upon him. He did not want to bother you, but he says the dragon has been particularly temperamental wanting to see her mistress."

I hurried from lunch to Taiger's chambers. When I arrived, the door opened before I even landed a third knock.

The room was in disarray, looking exactly like a young dragon had been angrily thrashing around the room. Broken vases, upended tables, and a deck of playing cards that looked just a little singed around the edges, lay on the floor.

The dragon came to me straight away while Taiger fell over his feet to apologize about the damage she'd done.

"Please don't even trouble yourself, Taiger. They are only things, and she is mine. I cannot blame you if she is a naughty little creature."

While the dragon danced around my feet, I helped the young mage set the room to rights.

When we were done, we left the castle and strode down the wall-walk of the inner fortress wall.

The dragon took one look at the open sky and vaulted up off my shoulder, snapping her wings out and beating them against the air.

Panic hit me as I watched her rise. Her reflective scales picked up the color of the cloudless sky, and in a single moment, she had disappeared into the blue.

At my stricken look, Taiger laughed. "Don't worry, Your Highness, she won't cause any trouble."

"But will she come back?" I asked. I hadn't actually considered the problems a naughty little dragon might cause in the city. All my worry was for her safety. "And she won't...eat anyone?" I added, reluctantly.

Taiger tried not to laugh again, but I could tell he was finding amusement in my ignorance. I hardly blamed him.

"Bonded dragons are ultimately good. They'll not harm a person unless in self-defense, defense of their rider or their mate.

..or defense of the realm. Dragons have defended Nightfall, especially Darkwatch, for thousands and thousands of years.

" The young boy suddenly seemed much wiser than his years.

"Tell me about Darkwatch," I coaxed. I already knew that Taiger was a part of Io's court. They lived in Dragon's Reach, the fortress that served as the gateway to Darkwatch—and beyond it, to the rest of Nightfall.

I wanted to hear about the kingdom within a kingdom from someone who lived there as one of its subjects.

Taiger waxed nearly poetic about his home, his face lit from within by some passion I could hardly comprehend.

"The sky..." he looked up at the clear blue sky overhead, smiling and shaking his head, as though he could see it. "—it's beautiful. The stars are so much more numerous than they are anywhere else—or if not more numerous, more visible through some trick of nature."

He described the ever-present aurora in the sky, calling it a heavenly wonder of light and color that more than makes up for never seeing dawn.

"The colors of Darkwatch are somehow more vibrant, even in the muted starlight. The purple grasses of the Iyridian Valley are alive with some color that the eyes here just cannot fathom."

I listened to the boy, marveling at the way he spoke of his home, and feeling jealous of the way he spoke of his people.

"We are somehow more connected—kinder, more respectful. We do not put as much stock in classes or titles or wealth. There is no lord or lady in Darkwatch save for Amon, and people rarely even use his title."

Taiger looked wistful as he stared out across the portion of the city that was visible, the streets and buildings spreading out beyond the wall.

"The people of Darkwatch do not suffer with want, and if they did, it would be because their lord also suffered.

They work for living wages, and no one looks down on you that your mother was an Obeskan whore who left you on the steps of an earth temple in the freezing cold. "

I watched his face grow poignant, his eyes focused far away. My heart ached to imagine him as that child left in the cold north of Obeska, where I knew the climate could be extremely harsh in winter.

I reached out and looped my arm in his, and he smiled at me, surprised. "I'm so sorry for that, Taiger," I told him.

"Don't be," he replied. "The lord found me there, no more than a moment after she had walked away. He said I lifted my arms to him, and he picked me up without thinking."

I tried to imagine it—him no more than a toddler, pink cheeked in the cold. Io could not have been much more than a teenager himself. Unless, I realized with a start, he was much older than he looked, as was common with the fae.

"He flew me back to Darkwatch on Veles—the one time the big grumpy dog ever allowed another soul on his back—and he put me in service to the dragon masters in the Reach."

"And your mother?" I asked, feeling the question might have been a tad too prying.

He gave me a tight-lipped smile and shook his head. His normally pale face was slightly ruddy, the spattering of freckles across his nose and cheeks standing out against the heightened color. I thought he likely struggled as much as I did with hiding emotions on an expressively blushing face.

"I like to think she knew he would find me—that she planned it for precisely when he would walk by." He huffed a laugh. "It's unlikely, though. She would have no way to know, as most do not, that he is not the fearsome lord of nightmares that everyone outside Darkwatch believes him to be."

"I'm sure she only did what she thought was best, in any case," I told him. "I don't pretend to understand what it must feel like to have a child you cannot feed, cannot protect."

He seemed to appreciate the thought as we looped back around the wall-walk, heading toward the castle again.