Page 21 of The Dragon Queen #3

It was different flying to Finder’s Dell this time. The sun was up for one, and I was leaning over in the saddle, scouring the landscape with my eyes, looking for signs, something to clue me in on what happened and why. I didn’t get it on the journey over there, nor when I slipped from the saddle. I moved without thought, my eyes flicking across the grassy knoll, over the few sheep that grazed here, only to be scared away by the wings of a dragon’s landing, until I found the large flat rock Draven and I had sat upon.

It was hotter now, being baked by the sun. Glimmer made a small sound of pleasure as she joined me, her eyes whirling as she investigated right along me, pausing when we stumbled across a smooth piece of stone.

Too smooth to be natural, I squatted down to dig at it, encountering tough grass and roots almost as soon as I tried. My belt knife was out and I was stabbing at the earth as the others joined me.

“Pippin…”

Soren dropped down in front of me, but I remained focussed. I needed to know. What had happened? How did we find ourselves in the situation we were in right now? I was sure I’d find out if I could just… unearth history, then pore over its artefacts. Wraith seemed of th e same mind as he nudged his rider out of the way and then extended a massive claw.

Let the males, Glimmer told me. They have the strength to do what needs to be done.

I sat back on my heels, eyeing Wraith speculatively.

Can you tell him to be careful? I need to unearth the remains of the town here to work out what happened.

Hold the crystal egg in your hand. I looked down and there it was. Prick your finger. I went to do that with my dirt encrusted dagger, but Flynn made a huff of discontent, squatting down to hand me his.

“You’ll give yourself a blood disease using a dirty knife.”

He didn’t like this. I could read his emotions more clearly, almost see his thoughts as I held the egg. He was tired, aching, still grieving his family, the wound fresh despite his cousin’s death. Now I was having us traipsing over the countryside. He half regretted showing me the ruins in the first place. That had him remembering the moment he took me to the first ruin, the feelings he’d fought to keep suppressed. Somehow he was right back in that position, having to pretend I was Draven’s queen, not his.

“I’m sorry.”

My hand went out and grabbed his arm. He smiled and there was some of the same light in it, but there were shadows as well.

“For slicing yourself up with a dirty knife? There’s no need for apologies.”

“No, for…” How did I say it? The insights the egg gifted me were a boon and a curse. I’m sorry assassins killed your family. I’m sorry Draven is forcing us all to pretend to be something we aren’t, when we would’ve had to do the same thing as I played the role of Brom’s wife. “For everything,” I finished lamely. “After the other night, the last thing you must feel like doing is scrabbling around in the dirt.”

“That’s the thing about love.” He reached over and drew me closer, pressing a kiss to my forehead. “It makes everything bearable if you can spend time with the person you care about. Blowing up ships, negotiating with dragon queens, and now…?”

He nodded at the dirt before him, and when I looked up, all the dragons and their riders were ringed around us. I hadn’t stopped to explain anything to any of them. That’s what had me pricking the knife blade to my finger and pressing the bead of blood to the stone.

I’d show all of them.

My memories of the vision were fragmented, at least partially because I hadn’t wanted to dwell on the horrors. Glimmer’s mind touched mine, augmenting the shared vision, filling in the gaps until everyone saw it. I heard the huffs of dragon breath, the muttered curses of my men, right up until the vision ended and all that was left was us.

“I need to know what happened. Those were dragon corp riders.”

“From quite some time ago,” Brom said, looking across at Soren. “Those uniforms?—”

“At least a few hundred years old,” he replied, crossing his arms. “The epaulettes, the cut of the tunics…”

“The layers of dirt burying everything gives credence to that.” Ged kicked at the soil. “So what do you want to do?”

I didn’t tell them. Instead, I moved towards Wraith, holding the egg tightly as my mind reached out.

Wraith?

My queen.

I watched his head drop down into a close approximation of a bow and that had me moving closer, putting my hand on the massive span between his eyes.

No need to bow to me.

I will anyway.

I snorted, my breath catching in my chest at the feel of his mind. It was vast, packed with experiences, perspectives I could spend my life trying to understand, and I promised myself then I would, just not now.

You know what I need?

Truth.

Cloudy pushed forward, nudging me so hard in the ribs I staggered back.

Don’t hurt the queen .

Obsidian’s growl stopped all three of the other dragons in their tracks.

Not hurting me. I moved in then, rubbing my hands along Cloudy’s eye ridges, something that had Glacier’s head snaking forward. You’ll never hurt me.

I would enjoy head rubs too.

The blue dragon pressed his muzzle very gently into my hand and that had me laughing.

My bondmate is very good at giving head rubs , Glimmer opined, climbing up on Glacier’s neck. That forced me to give both of them a good scratch. Ahh, yes, right there. Their pleasure was infectious, flooding into me, driving out all the fear and misery of the last few days. I was a dragon in the sun getting the good scratches. What could be better than that? But we must go to work. Pippin wants the truth . Her eyes met mine. We must help her find it.

“So we’re excavating this place?” Flynn said. “Well, we’ll need to do so carefully and methodically. Cloudy!” The red dragon’s head popped up from where he was digging furiously, looking just like a naughty dog. “If we just dig willy nilly, we’ll destroy artefacts, but more importantly, the context they were found in. We’ll need to work together and carefully dig through the top layer of soil, then the next layer and so forth.”

“You’ve done this before?” Brom asked, then glanced at Soren. “I don’t remember archeology being something cadets were taught.”

“My father…” Flynn’s voice was choked off, but he swallowed and then forged on. “My father was somewhat of an amateur history buff. He loved to wax lyrical about our family’s history in Skane. “We’re descended from Queen Inara herself,” he’d say.” Flynn managed to imitate his father’s stuffy tones perfectly. “One of the few times he held off trying to find me a wife amongst his bannermen’s daughters was when we were in the field.”

“Visualise what you want to see done,” I told him, holding out the egg. His hands went around mine and we closed our eyes, and that’s when I saw it. String lines and trowels, a much younger Flynn labouring over a square of dirt, excavating it carefully. I wasn’t sure if dragon claws were capable of that kind of careful work, but we’d have to see.

You want to see the ruins. Glacier moved in and nudged at his rider. You want to see what happened.

You know? Flynn asked him.

Dragons retain their history better than humans do. His head whipped around as he evidently heard Glimmer in his mind. We… feel it. She turned then to her mates. You know what we seek. Her wings flapped out as she glided down from Glacier’s back and then landed next to the stone I had been trying to dig out, her claws cutting through the grass roots far more effectively than my hands. Now we must retrieve it.

We should’ve brought water, food too, I thought dimly, as I went to work beside Glimmer. My knife dug into the earth, the tip scraping against something far harder than soil as I plunged it deeper. I scraped away the dirt to find a small fragment of carved stone. Deeper and deeper we all went, flicking soil down the side of the hill to collect in the valley as we discovered just what had been hidden from us.

“So it was an official raid.”

Brom held a much tarnished dragon corp insignia in his hand. The emblem was far more ornate, the dragon picked out in perfect detail, rather than the silhouettes we now wore, but the nature of it was incontrovertible. The same size, the same pin mechanism, it was worn by a member of the corp that had got caught in the blast of the explosives they dropped.

“Looks like he died during the mission.” Ged picked through the ghostly remains we’d discovered, then tossed a mangled knife back down into the mess. “Do you think that was an accident?”

“Or by design?”

Flynn’s jaw muscles flexed. His eyes were too bright, his skin too pale, as he considered that. “Seems like the perfect way to cover something up. No known survivors to pass on the news of what they’d done.” He looked across at Glacier. “No gossipy dragons talking amongst themselves.”

“They were sent on a suicide mission?” Soren seemed personally offended by such an idea. Wraith nuzzled his side, and he scratched at the dragon’s muzzle absentmindedly. “Men I might be able to come at, but dragons? They’re too valuable to waste on such a thing.”

“And yet there were many, many dragons killed here.”

At Brom’s words, Glimmer stepped forward.

Dragons are power , she said, her voice taking on a strange, almost hollow edge. They have always been such. The smaller dragons on the continent were hunted, killed, or enslaved. Only the largest and most powerful could flee, crossing the channel to Nevermere. That’s why we didn’t want humans here.

Tanis? I asked on a hunch.

Glimmer met my gaze, but I wasn’t sure who was talking right now.

Power cannot be allowed to exist unclaimed.

I wanted to argue, but the evidence was before us. Human bones, dragon bones, small and big, were scattered across the ground. It must either fit within existing structures or…?

That’s why the humans destroyed the hatching grounds, I thought. We were taught that the wild dragons grew greedy, were burning people’s crops, seizing their stock animals with little thought to farmer’s livelihood, but what if…? History belonged to the victors, and it was obvious from my memories of Dragon Home who that was.

Humans.

But what we built would always be threatened by the presence of free dragons. They were so much bigger, more powerful, able to dispatch hundreds of people with one breath of ice, fire, or acid. The very thing that made them so desirable as parts of our armed forces?—

Made them a threat to national security.

One of my father’s hunting dogs went into heat and mated with a local mongrel, not the sire the dogman had in mind. I had been excited by the idea of puppies, but my father made clear that these would not survive. Would not be allowed to. The estate couldn’t afford to bring more animals into the world than it could sustain, so each one had to justify its purpose in a way.

But dragons weren’t dogs .

Amongst the bones and the shards of stone were the remains of the amphitheatre. The carvings there could be seen in places. This was a town where humans and dragons lived together in some kind of peace. They had homes, families, pets, tools, art. In one afternoon, the queen’s dragon riders had destroyed a civilisation.

All to ensure dragonkind remained under their control.

Dragon Home existed because the queens, then kings, needed bloodlines to interbreed with their corp dragons. All good farmers knew of the risks of interbreeding. It could be used to fix certain traits. It may well have been that Glacier and all other water dragons were far smaller offshoots of the same ancestor, Aisenbran, and if they were the only ones to breed, all dragons would be blue and wield the same powers. But too much interbreeding meant all the genetic flaws were allowed to grow exponentially. The dragon corp came here and blew up the town like farmers might eradicate a colony of rabbits. They were competing for the same resources, and that couldn’t be tolerated. I stared at the remains as I heard a crooning sound.

Glimmer had sung for many reasons, but I think this was the saddest. There was a haunting quality to her tones, something the other dragons matched. The sound swelled, taking life, growing in my chest, until my own throat worked, a horrible sound coming out. Part choked off cry, part dirge, it floundered and then rang true. Not with words, because there was none for what we saw. Just regret, pain, disgust, and horror. I let that flood out of me, because there was so much more.

Flynn knew better than most. This convoluted grasping for power had struck his family the hardest. His voice was far finer than mine, rising with a brittle kind of strength as it joined the dragons. My hand shot out, clasping his and holding it tight. Soren stepped forward, clasping his hands before him, not singing, but bowing his head in acknowledgement. Brom did the same as Ged shook his head.

“Fuck it…” he muttered before breaking out into song.

His voice was terrible, more akin to a bellow than singing, but this wasn’t about creating a pretty sound. What had happened here was ugly, and perhaps we needed to make an equally ugly song to mark it. Finally, it all trailed away and I wavered on my feet, feeling lightheaded and strange. I couldn’t tell if I was living in the past or the present until I felt Glimmer nudge my leg. Now, I was living now. I stared out at the burial site and then shook my head.

“We need to rebury the bones, leave the dead to their rest,” I said. “Then we need to get back to… make sure this kind of thing never happens again.”

So why did I see dragon riders in contemporary uniforms in place of the archaic ones in my mind? Why did I see villages and towns, humans and dragons alike, killed by explosives? The history books talked about the devastation that happened during the Battle of Two Queens.

How would historians record our actions? Saviours come to quell a savage civil war or… I blinked as the dragons moved, dragging soil back over the bones. Butchers who tore the country apart in an attempt to keep an upper hand?