Page 54 of The Poisoned King (Impossible Creatures #2)
The Fire-Breathing Scourge of Injustice
So it was that less than two months after that night out on the battlements with the gagana egg, Anya left the castle. She left the island that was all she had known, and traveled—by a sturdy, well-supplied sailing boat, rather than on sphinx back or winged unicorn—to the islet of Glimt.
It had been Irian’s idea. “A brain wave,” she would have said. “Stroke of genius,” Nighthand would have said.
“If we are to be a refuge for creatures, shouldn’t we extend that to young humans, Nighthand? We could take in those who are in need of care, or protection, or education?”
Nighthand had been, at first, uncertain: “Aren’t young people inclined to sing gladdening songs? I won’t stand for it.”
But swiftly—very swiftly, because it was Irian—he had been persuaded. “We’ll send out Ratwin, next year, see if we can find others, unusual young people. But no gamboling, no innocent frolicking in my presence, you understand?”
Anya’s father had traveled with her, leaning over the side of the boat to study the seaweeds as they passed. Irian had written to him: they had need, she said, of a gardener.
Anya had been not the first but the second student to be welcomed to the island.
The first she discovered in the garden of Glimt, pulling burs from the fur of an al-miraj.
“Christopher!” It felt like all the luck in the world at once. “But you went back to the Outerlands! I thought your father—”
He laughed. “It took some fighting. My dad refused, at first, to let me come back—he kept talking about exams and schools and university applications—but Frank helped. He said I needed to learn more about the Archipelago.”
“But I thought your grandfather would need your help at the waybetween? Now that it’s open all the time?”
“He has a new helper. A woman called Petra Ferrara.”
“ What? Dr. Ferrara! How?”
“They met, once, years ago. Apparently they never forgot. She came and found me. We went back through the waybetween together.”
“And the Paraspara waybetween? The one that was guarded by a chimaera?”
It had been found dead, all its eyes stolen.
“There’s a new guardian. The Flying Senate said it was a temporary solution, but to be honest, I don’t think they’ll be able to replace him if he doesn’t want to be replaced.”
—
Arach lay by the waybetween, his great red-and-black wings furled.
His sight was perfect now. Dragons rarely sleep, and they make fine guards, and better guardians.
Yes, there was a higher risk of death and digestion than was ideal for those who wished to travel through the waybetween, but the nuances of that, everyone agreed, could be worked out in time.
—
The gaganas came with her: Gallia, Coren, Koo, and the others.
At first she had been unsure if it was fair to ask them.
“But I’m not royal. Royal gaganas follow the royals—and I’m not anymore.”
Gallia had never looked so formidable. “I, too, am no longer royal: there are no more royals. Therefore I am allowed to do whatever I wish. And what I wish, Anya, is to sleep on the headboard of your bed. I told you, did I not? I will always follow.”
Most of the gaganas built nests in the forest, but Koo slept on her pillow, entwined in her hair, breathing stentoriously into her ear.
Anya still sometimes jerked awake in the night with a cry, her uncle in her dreams; but always, in the pitch dark, she could hear the rustling of wings as her small flock moved in its sleep.
—
Anya’s father had packed only a small trunk of clothes, but the rest of the boat had been full of his plants.
On his second day, Argus sought out Jacques.
He was with Christopher on the lawn. “I am dictating my biography,” said the jaculus, “for the boy to set down. We have got to the part where I aid in the salvation of the island of Dousha. Have you an endorsement to offer, perhaps? Or a song of praise often goes down well with the reading public, if you were minded to give one.”
“Not an endorsement, no, nor a song,” said Argus.
His smile was wide, though his eyes, these days, were still profoundly sad.
The truth of his brother had wounded him to the bone, and it would take years to heal; perhaps it never would.
“But I have something I want to offer you. I understand you have no flame?”
Jacques looked, scandalized, at Christopher. “That was supposed to be a personal and private secret! Have you no sense of propriety? Of loyalty? I have a mind to bite off the nail of your smallest toe, in retribution.”
“Anya told me, not Christopher,” said Argus.
“Then I shall bite her instead!”
“Don’t do that just yet. I have a plant that I’ve been cultivating, called the rascovnic. It has extraordinary powers of unlocking. I think it may be able to help you.”
“Why? I am not a door, nor indeed any form of architecture.”
“I wonder if your fire is not so much lost, or exhausted, as…blocked. You expended a great effort, last year, when you unleashed your fire on the island of Arkhe. And you suffered a loss: the Immortal, whom you loved, died that day.”
“Preposterous,” said Jacques. “Dragons do not love humans; not even Immortal ones. It would be indecorous and beneath our dignity.”
Argus smiled. “I wonder, even so, if the rascovnic might unlock your fire.”
He held out the clovers: three of them, fifteen precious leaves, on his palm. Jacques pulled the face of a duchess offered a tureen of rat; but nonetheless, he flew to Argus’s hand and swallowed the plants.
And then his whole body changed; it quivered, and a mighty force seemed to be working within him. His silver-green face turned sudden red, then sudden gold.
“Christopher!” Jacques cried out, and his voice rose in a great glorious roar. “Christopher, take notes! I am about to astonish you!”
The dragon drew in breath—and a vast burst of flame erupted across the garden. It reached all the way to the lagoon, and the ocean bubbled with it.
“You must rename my biography The Fire-Breathing Scourge of Injustice: The Grateful Jaculus. That will summarize it well.”