Page 7 of The Dragon Queen Complete Series Collection
Chapter 7
I’d heard that they shaved a woman’s head when she entered a nunnery and as Nadia worked with the razor, I understood why. The familiar weight I’d worn since I was a little girl was shed, and with it was a sense of rebirth as the lousy strands fell into the bathwater with each swipe of the razor. I’d tried to do it myself, facing the mirror on the wall, but Nadia had fussed, then insisted, coming forward to take over. And when she was finished?
I stepped free of the water, feeling it run over a form that was more naked than it had ever been. No hair to encumber me, no dirt and no mud. No pigs, no shame, no regret. I had faced danger and I had walked away unharmed. That was unlikely to have happened without the assistance of the dragon rider, but I was willing to take the win regardless. When I stepped onto the cool tile floor, walking past Nadia, towel in hand and towards the mirror, I peered at the reflection on the wall.
I’d have been able to pass as a young man for some time, it appeared. The face that looked back at me was long and lean, the only softness coming in the form of a full pair of lips. My skin was sun browned and freckled, but it was my eyes that would have sold the ruse. They were hardened now, no hint of girlish modesty left in them. Everything had been scraped away, not just my hair. I took the towel from my maid with a grateful smile, dried myself off and then donned the simple clothes of Father’s that she’d laid out, then walked downstairs, the clack of my boots sounding deafening as I went. But any sound I made was swallowed as soon as I reached the great hall, because I was met by the sounds of shouts and shrieks of complaint, right up until such point as people noticed my presence.
“Thank you for lending me your armour, dragon rider,” I said, sketching a bow before handing it to Ged. He just stared at me, wide eyed, no doubt at the strange sight of a woman in men’s clothes with close-cropped hair. “You may wish to have the leather treated before wearing it.” I rubbed my hand ruefully across my head. “I unfortunately contracted lice during my banishment.”
“It’ll be alright, milady,” he replied in a gruff voice. “Anything that’s survived won’t last long once I take altitude with Cloudy.”
“Lady Pippa.” Our attention was shifted sideways to where the rest of the dragon riders stood, but it was Brom who strode forward. “We have been searching for you, and yet you were here all along.” His arms crossed his broad chest, the leather creaking in protest. “You were the ‘lad’ with the pigs.” I nodded slowly, hearing the muttering start around the room. “I thought as much. My dragon, Obsidian, was uncommonly interested in you. I’d intended to stop by your hut and see if the lad I met was interested in joining the corps. Instead, I find you’re the missing lady of the house.”
His attention shifted then, his eyes narrowing as they focussed on Arabella and my stepmother.
“The one I was assured had died of the… what was it again?”
“Ague, I believe it was,” another dragon rider said. “Quite the feat in a region noticeably devoid of mosquitoes.” He shot the two women a sardonic smile. “Should’ve gone with a lung complaint or a non-specific plague.”
He was a good looking man, all wavy light brown hair, high cheekbones and dazzling a smile and, for some reason, that affronted me. It was as though he found this whole thing a joke. I ground my teeth, then sucked in a breath, ready to direct the proceedings back to the important issues.
“Peace, Flynn,” Brom said with a quick look over his shoulder, as if he could feel my irritation. “So we have charges of lying to the royal dragon riders to consider, as well as the dubious circumstances that led to a lady of an esteemed house living as a swineherd and her stepmother and stepsister claiming her lands as their own.”
“That is all above board and legal.”
My stepmother’s voice rang out through the hall. It was the first time I’d heard her voice since she’d tossed me out on my ear. I turned slowly, wanting to see and not, all at the same time. I took in her erect carriage, the way her greying hair was pulled back in a perfect chignon, her hands clasped in front of her, her body radiating a repressed anger as her eyes finally met mine.
The last time I’d seen her, those dark depths had danced with cruel amusement, as Old Bay protested when she nominated me as his apprentice, when she’d asked some of her men to escort me out of the house, tossing a handful of Father’s clothing after me. It did something to me to see her on the back foot for once.
“Kensington, tell him,” she said, pointing imperiously at my father’s solicitor.
“You can keep me out of this, Cecily,” the lawyer said with a shake of his head. “I told you this would never stand up to dragon scrutiny. But you had to host the damn things at the hall. They can read your mind?—”
She cut him off with an exasperated snort, but this was quickly drowned out by the low roars of the dragons outside, bringing the whole hall to silence.
“They can, you know,” the rider named Flynn said with a smile. “For such magnificent creatures, they are terrible gossips. I know whose marriage is in trouble and whose husband is tarrying with the chambermaid and which woman is having a baby that’s not her husband’s, all before I’ve had my breakfast. They see, feel, everything.” His smile faltered then. “They can’t abide murder or abuse, especially sexual abuse.”
His eyes swivelled around to where the three lads who’d attacked me stood, still covered in mud. They shifted closer to each other now, as if strength could be found in numbers.
“Which brings us to you three. Who sent you to rape Lady Pippa and steal from her?”
“No one,” the leader said swiftly, then glanced at his mates. “We went of our own accord.”
“We know who sent you, lads,” Ged said, stepping forward. “We just need you to say so before this crowd, so they know as well.”
“Surely if a trial is to be held, the boys deserve representation,” Kensington said.
“There’s no commuting your sentence, no asking for clemency here,” Ged replied, his harsh voice becoming quiet and deadly. “You involved the royal dragon riders in this matter the moment you failed to produce Lady Pippa.”
“We were sent to the homes of every single woman on the census who comes from a family that has had a dragon rider in their number,” Brom said, surveying the room. My eyes widened. Some long forgotten Wentworth ancestor was a dragon rider? “We asked for Lady Pippa and we were told lies. Worse, the woman we sought was being robbed, brutalised, and would have suffered a dire fate if our dragons hadn’t alerted us to the attack. Everyone who is found complicit in that attack will face our wrath.”
Mouths, so many mouths opened at that, each one babbling their excuse, their innocence, until Brom raised a hand. A roar from the dragons outside was enough to silence them all at once.
“Who sent you to the lady’s hut?” Brom asked the lads again.
“She did!” one of the others shouted, stabbing his finger in Arabella’s direction. “She told us about the rider gold, said we could make ourselves some money and put the little bitch back in her place. Said she’d give us double whatever we stole from the woman…” He paled then, staring at one rider, then another. “…If we did the job right.”
“Take the lot of them out the back and feed them to the dragons, Brom,” the last rider said, scorn heavy in his voice. He had long black hair that was beginning to silver at the temples, kept tied back into a neat horse tail. “They’re all bastards. All of them. The dragons will sort them out quickly enough.”
“It’s not enough to do justice, Soren,” Brom replied with exaggerated emphasis. “We need to be seen to do justice.”
“You need the story to come out.” The words came out of my mouth unbidden, but once I started, I couldn’t seem to stop. “You need them to understand the wrongdoing.”
I scanned the group of people gathered here and wondered if that was possible. There were other landowners, shop keepers, the solicitor and his family, the banker with his. I looked around the hall, at the gilt mouldings and beautiful paintings both familiar and unfamiliar all at once. I hadn’t looked upon anything as grand as this for what felt like an age. All of the powerful people that lived in Deepacre were gathered here right now, and all of them had stood by and watched my stepmother take me down.
As I looked around, I met the eyes of the older rider, Soren, and saw something I hadn’t expected to: a kindred spirit. I wanted what he wanted, to drag these bloody bastards out into the field before the dragons and let the great beasts sort the issue out. If they could see into their hearts, those great saurians would know who should live and who should die.
The trouble is, so did I.
By losing my position of privilege, I’d been forced to confront another reality and while I was down at basically the bottom level of society, all of my assumptions, my expectations had been challenged. Life wasn’t about right or wrong or fair or unfair. No, instead in the real world it was might equals right. Well, now, I was the one wielding the might.
“Tell your stories of what you did to me,” I said, biting each word off precisely. “Tell the riders what your role was in this debacle, and remember that their dragons will let them know if you are lying. Tell them one by one what you did and what you didn’t. And then…” I held Soren’s eyes, his dour face lightening slightly as he began to smile, “And then you’ll meet the judgement of the dragons.”
“Shouldn’t have brought all of those pigs, Brom,” Soren said. “The beasts will eat well tonight.”