Something caught hold. My interest tugged, making me look up at the rafters, then down at the floor. It was not unpleasant, but it was… strange.
I see. Yuánchi’s thought was astonished. Then it became concerned.It is blurry. What is wrong with your eyes?
I laughed.My eyes are quite healthy. This is how humans see. Our eyes are inferior to draca.
Your sight is dim as well. Show me the length.
I picked up the lantern and walked to the far end.
It is long enough,he mused.I could turn without dipping my tail.
An important consideration, I agreed.
It would be comfortable, for a time. I would like to be near. Shall I come?
Draca saw perfectly well in the dark. He could fly here before dawn. A dragon in the center of London.
I must make preparations,I thought.There is more to comfort than a dry tail. Food. You cannot hunt deer.I nibbled my lip.I suppose I should ask Darcy as well.
After all, trust went both ways. This seemed the sort of thing a wyfe would discuss with her husband.
He will do what you wish,Yuánchi thought.You are a great wyfe.
I crouched down by the water, considering. Yuánchi might hide for a few days, but not forever. Revealing a dragon would shake the world. Would the Council’s desire to use Yuánchi rise or fall? Perhaps publicity would intimidate the French. End their experiments with draca.
Yuánchi’s curiosity tugged my eyes to the smeared lights reflecting under the gate. I was not sure how long he had slept at the bottom of Pemberley lake, but it was many centuries. Even the Scottish legends did not include a dragon. What would he think of London? Had he ever seen a city?
I swept a fingertip through the frigid water, shattering the city’s light to sparks.
My vision turned black. I plunged to another world.
I kneltin a long silk robe beside a river as deep and ponderous as a lake. The night air was sticky-hot. The shore was tepid mud, soaking the delicate cloth under my knees.
My fingers, bronze-skinned and shriveled with age, nudged a paper lanterninto the current. The paper was brushed with symbols in a Far Eastern script, but I knew them: the names of my husband, and my son, and my son’s family.
This was how I mourned.
The lantern spun downstream, attracting fluttering moths. A fish rose, and the candle wobbled. Behind me, the executioner stood with his sword held high, waiting to end my duty as a noble wife.
But the words of acquiescence stuck in my throat. They were caught on my anger. Treachery had killed my family. Only the perversity of respect postponed my death, an old woman disempowered and unthreatening. Unable to exact justice.
A silver thread tore through my heart. Fury.
The river exploded in mist and spray. A shadow rose, dark as char and black as pitch. Huge enough to enfold the world. Violent as the fall of an iron hammer.
I was crouchedin the boathouse, my fingers sunk in freezing mud.
“What happened?” I gasped.
I am coming to you.
“No. Wait.”
I saw. I am coming. I will not wait.Yuánchi’s thoughts were inhumanly potent, piling in my mind like a fall of boulders. My vision flickered. I saw forest streaking below, lit in the peculiar violet that draca saw under a night sky.
“What did I see?” I said aloud.
It is old. The memory of a first wyfe binding. But I do not know her.
