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CHAPTER

Seventy-Five

I N THE MIDST of the massacre, a grand procession.

The Dragon-prowed boat, sailing down the Grand Canal. All the rest had been set alight—destroyed so that no one could use them to escape the island. The Dragon boat glided past the burning wrecks, stately and incongruous.

Andren stood at the prow, admiring the flames. He would burn the whole wretched island down, if he could. As they reached the temple steps he jumped free and held out his hand to his daughter. Nisthala took it, returning his smile. Her mother—joining them now on the steps—had taught her how to hide her true feelings in his presence. Whatever she thought of her father, he had delivered her here, just as he had promised the day she arrived on the island. Whether he looked like the Old Bear, or—as he did now—her brother Ruko, she would smile, and be patient.

Andren led her up the steps, past twin lines of Samran Hounds. Torches flamed at the entrance. For Nisthala, who had not left her rooms in seven years, who had waited so long for this hour, everything was a wonder.

“And it’s all for you my dear,” Andren said.

Smile. “Thank you, Your Majesty.”

Andren leaned in. “You may call me Father, here. These are my personal Hounds.” Putting a hand at the base of her spine, through her layers of woollen clothes, he guided her inside.

Below them, Shal Worthy helped Jadu from the boat. Her mouth remained clamped shut in its steel muzzle, but he had watched her closely with his Houndsight on their trip down the canal. Contempt was all that she had shown him. Weary contempt. And behind that, the faintest flicker of relief. She saw that her death was coming this hour, and welcomed it. This was not a world in which she wished to live.

“Keep watch,” Yasila said, to Shal.

He bowed, and took up a position by the temple doors.

Inside, the Hounds gave their report. Yes, they had swept every room, there was no one else here. They didn’t mention the Fox chapel, and the chickens. It wasn’t something his majesty needed to hear about at this auspicious moment. The emperor did not have a taste for the absurd.

The Dragon contingent had been drugged at supper and woken as prisoners. They were brought out now, bound and gagged, carrying themselves with the same dignity as their ruler.

“Where is Ruko?” Nisthala asked, hunched in her bundle of clothes. She was shivering, her lips pale.

“I’m sorry darling,” Andren purred. “He’s already on board.”

“You said we could talk. I want to see him—”

“Well, you can thank your dear mother for the change in plan.” Grabbing Yasila’s wrist, he wrenched open her hand to show the wounds on her palm. “Couldn’t bear to watch him suffer, could you?”

Yasila stared at him in silent defiance.

“I knew you summoned your beloved Visitor to kill him. Not that it mattered. Ruko was always destined to win the Festival. Pyke died for nothing, thanks to you.” He rubbed his thumb over Yasila’s wounds. “I thought you wanted revenge for Yanara. That would have made sense. But it wasn’t revenge, was it? You were trying to spare him.”

He pressed down on the wound. Yasila gasped in pain.

“Stop!” Nisthala cried out. “Stop hurting her!”

Andren let go. “Forgive me, Nisthala,” he said. “But your mother made a promise to me. She would give me Ruko, and the Guardians, and I would keep you safe here, until you were ready to rule.” He frowned at his wife. “We had a deal.”

“You could have ruled as someone else,” Yasila said. “Cain, Neema. Havoc. You could have ruled as any one of them—”

“No!” Andren snarled. “It had to be him.”

“You wanted Ruko dead?” Nisthala asked her mother.

“Yes,” Yasila said, softly. “Better that, than…” She could say no more. Her son’s fate. Worse even than Yanara’s. Unbearable. Unbearable.

Andren shifted, uncomfortable. “Well. A mother’s love. I suppose I cannot hold that against you. But you shall not see him again. I will not risk that. I need him kept safe, and well.”

“The windows!” Nisthala said.

The stained-glass panes were brightening with the sun. Forgetting her brother, she moved eagerly to a spot below the Altar of the Eight. “It’s time!”

For once, Yasila and Andren found something they could smile at together.

Yasila brought Jadu forward and removed her metal gag. “Speak one false word,” she warned, “and you shall regret it.”

Ignoring her, Jadu moved straight to Nisthala’s side and took her hand. The emerald in her forehead shone. One touch was enough. Seven years of suffering were at an end.

Nisthala’s eyes widened. “I’m warm. I’d forgotten…” The tiredness and discomfort she lived with, that pressed down upon her constantly, had vanished in one heartbeat. Laughing, she untied her hooded cloak and removed her thick woollen layers, her boots and woollen stockings, until she was standing in nothing but a plain grey cotton shift.

As her skin was revealed, the Dragon contingent groaned behind their masks. Each one of them had a single scar on the inside of their wrist, shaped like an eternal eight. Each one of them remembered the pain of it. Nisthala had scores of them, tessellating up her arm to her shoulder. A latticework of silver scars, like fish scales. A Chosen child, hidden from the Dragon. Kept from the cleansing relief of its fire.

“The pain is gone,” Nisthala said, rubbing her hand up her arm.

“You should never have felt it.” Jadu slid Yasila a pale, accusing look. “Your mother has served you ill.”

“She has protected me,” Nisthala said.

Jadu’s gaze returned to the girl. “She has kept you from your true family. For her own selfish ends.”

Yasila laughed, almost in despair.

A tilt of the head, from the woman who had raised her. “What words do I speak, Yasila, that are false?”

Another shaft of sunlight poured through the stained-glass windows, painting a kaleidoscope of colours on the stone floor. Enchanted, Nisthala prodded them with her bare foot, grey hair swinging down to cover her face.

“She is very young to serve the Dragon,” Jadu observed, to Yasila. “Not yet sixteen. That is your plan, I presume? For her to wear the Eye?” She touched the emerald on her forehead, the source and symbol of her power.

“If my daughter must live on Helia, then she will rule it.”

There was much Jadu could say to that, but she was a Dragon. She merely smiled at the presumption. The contingent, behind their gags, did the same. “And is this your desire, child?”

Nisthala stopped her prodding. Her eyes were still a dull, ash grey—Jadu had given her a taste of Dragonfire, but not enough to heat them to amber. “You call me child. Seven years I’ve spent without warmth or comfort, or company. I might have revealed my secret at any time, but I did not. This is my choice. My decision. And yes. It is my desire.”

She plucked the diadem from Jadu’s head.

Muffled cries from the Dragon contingent, as their world tilted away from them. There were ways, there were rituals. Jadu had worn the Eye for over sixty years. For it to be wrenched from her, so savagely…

And yet. It was the Dragon’s gift to give. If it did not want the girl to have it, she could not have taken it.

Nisthala snapped the emerald from its setting, and threw the priceless diadem to the floor.

“Nistha,” Yasila scolded, mildly.

Nisthala placed the stone in the middle of her forehead and let go. It sank slightly into her skin, embedding itself. A nourishing heat spread through her body, as if she were sliding into a warm bath. She laughed, and wept, as her eyes changed—not to full amber, but to a curious, crackled mix of flame and ash, like the last rakings of a pit fire. Something new, this was. She was something new.

Servant. Treasure.

A thought in her head—but not her own. Another presence had snaked its way into her mind, voice sibilant. For this jewel truly was the Dragon’s eye—a fragment of the Eighth Guardian, spared from the binding spell. Nisthala felt its unblinking gaze turn inwards, sifting through her thoughts, her memories, her dreams.

—Stop.

Amusement from the fragment— You would command me? That is not how this works, little one.

Nisthala stood firm against it, jaw set.

—I do command you. This is how it will work.

Seven years locked away in her bedchamber with nothing but her books, her drawings, and her dreams of the future. Any pain the Eye could give her she had felt before, and conquered.

—Oh, did I seem young and vulnerable to you? Easy to control? You will learn.

It lashed at her. Tail whip, claw slash, breath of fire. A coiling serpent’s embrace, crushing her bones. She was stronger. The battle was short, and decisive. The fragment retreated, subdued.

Nisthala had read many books. She knew this moment would be written of, down through the ages. How she stood in her grey cotton shift among the kaleidoscope of colours, sunlight beaming through the temple window. How she became Queen of the Dragons. She could almost feel the press of history, feel the eyes of future generations watching her from above, awe-struck.

“Your cloak, Jadu,” she said. “And your staff.”

Jadu’s hands were still bound. Yasila unclasped her cloak for her, and draped it around her daughter’s shoulders. A Hound brought forward the staff. Yasila presented it to Nisthala.

Nisthala tapped it once on the temple floor. As one, the Dragon contingent dropped to their knees. She curled her fingers over the top of the staff. “This staff was made from the wreck that brought my mother to your shores. This staff is Destiny.”

The contingent, still gagged, bowed their heads.

She was thinking of the way they had smiled behind their masks, as if they knew better than her. “You shall remain here on the island to guard the Eight and maintain their binding.” The Eye gleamed on her forehead. “You will not see Helia again. That is the command of your queen.”

The Dragons bowed their heads again, accepting their punishment.

Andren, observing from the periphery, clapped his hands. “Wonderful!”

Nisthala gave him a gracious nod, ruler to ruler. He really has no idea, she thought. How much I despise him.

Jadu, forgotten on the sidelines, sagged in exhaustion. The power that had been keeping her alive was gone, and she was fading.

Yasila was the only one to notice. She cupped Jadu’s elbow to help her balance. Felt how little flesh there was, that the old woman’s skin was cold to the touch, and paper thin. For decades, the Eye had kept her alive for its own purpose. Now she was free of it. Her fire was dying out.

Jadu’s eyes shifted from pale amber to dark blue. She blinked, feeling the change. “I was born in Riversmeet,” she said. “My name was Jadu Rell. My mother’s name was Ahra. We lived on Spring Street, in the Old Quarter, just the two of us. A long, long time ago.”

Something was happening to her body. A powdering, fine silt running from her skin, from her fingers. Her rose-gold hair turning white. She looked gently at Yasila. “Perhaps I wished to show love, and could not. Perhaps.”

A sigh, and a sinking, as her body disintegrated. By the time she reached the ground, there was nothing left but ash.