You would not understand any draca song. But my song is unfinished.He huffed and added,Do not ask ‘Why?’ No dragon song has been finished for an age.
I opened my mouth to ask “Whynot?” and got a hot snort blown in my eyes, so I folded my arms instead.
My vision of flying on a dragon occurred when I touched the blade at the museum. But my other vision had been here. When I touched the water.
I picked up the lantern and threaded the dragon-wall gap to the river gate. The lip of water beneath was frozen. I knelt, rubbed the ice with a finger, then rapped it with my knuckles.
“I wish to test something,” I said. “We must be outside. Would you like to try opening your gate?” The carpenters had fixed a wide board that would undo the latch from inside. Hopefully that would reduce repairs.
Yuánchi looked over his shoulder, and the tip of his tail curled upward to press gingerly against the board. The latch clicked, and the gate swung open. I shuttered the lantern to hide us as the cold night air rushed in.
Leave first, then I will follow.
I went out, fastening my coat and testing each step in the dark. When I was beside the building, Yuánchi’s mass poured out in a rush. He stretched hiswings into a vast tent of whispered wind and vanished stars, then folded them away.
“May I share your vision?” I asked. “It is too dark for me.”
I reached out with my mind, and my vision shifted to Yuánchi’s eyes. The black blur of trees became sharper than day, each wrinkle of bark and edge of dried leaf perfectly rendered in shades of violet. I was centered in his view, my face bright warmth against my cool hair, my clothed torso and limbs dimmer but also shining. The golden aura of a great wyfe surrounded me.
Curious, I raised my hand. The motion appeared reversed. Or unreversed. Which was correct, this or a looking glass?
“Would you show me to the river?”
Yuánchi turned his head, and the view swung. I picked my way to the frozen riverbank, struggling to navigate through someone else’s eyes and leaving footprints that glowed with borrowed warmth. I felt sticky and hot in my coat, but the frigid air bit my eyes and nostrils. I sensed Yuánchi’s perception inventorying nearby creatures. The closest humans with line of sight were specks across the river.
There were gouges in the river’s surface where Yuánchi’s claws had scraped, but no cracks. The ice must be thick. “Are you able to break a hole?”
His wings spread again. Through our link, I felt the balance they provided. He stretched a clenched foot over the river, then deftly extended a single scaly toe as thick as a man’s leg. The tip of his claw touched the ice and sank in. The motion was as smooth as pushing a finger into warm butter, but the river ice chattered and shook. His toe hooked, the ice groaned, and with a heavy crack, he levered up an irregular chunk several feet around and eight inches thick. He caught it like a cat flipping a mouse in its claws, then placed it aside.
I walked carefully onto the ice, then abandoned pride and crawled to the edge of the hole. Falling in would be terrifically unpleasant. Yuánchi stretched his neck above me, and I looked over my own shoulder into lapping black cold.
What are you doing?he asked, sounding extremely curious.
I drew my vision back to my own eyes and looked up at red glimmers in the night.
“Have you not guessed?” I said. “Do you not sense the presence?”
Yuánchi’s wings tensed and spread. He backed onto the shore, claws grinding the frozen earth. Each step vibrated the ice under my knees, and through our binding, I felt heat gather in his chest like the stoking of a god’s forge.
When his thoughts came, they were stripped of his usual comforting, human-like cadence. They chimed pure and alien.
A great wyfe’s senses are unknown to us.
“Well, this great wyfe is about to either feel very foolish and very cold, or to make a discovery.” I lowered my fingers into the water.
Dawn revealed the flooding river,swollen and silty. My god-falcon swooped to my feet, folding her limber wings. Her silver-bronze scales gleamed red in the early light.
The royal physician pointed his hand at the god-falcon. “Queen, abandon this ritual. Your husband is entombed, but your god-falcon remains bound. Only the greatest queens have this blessing. Your divinity is proven.”
I shook my head. “A god-falcon will not defeat Rome’s armies. A god-falcon will not save Egypt, nor protect me from being led through Rome, a spectacle for Octavian’s triumph.” I turned to Imhotep, my high priest. “You swear you can raise Ra?”
Imhotep was a lesser man than his famous father, but he too spoke with the authority of magic. “I have read secret histories. In the great river, the scarlet sun god sleeps. This is Ra’s winged form. I know the sacred song to call him.” He licked khol-blackened lips. “To bind him, you must journey to the hall of Ma’at. You must die and return.” He raised a stone cup half-filled with a foul-smelling tar. “I bring the venom of one hundred vile scorpions. We must add the god-falcon’s blood, freely given.”
I drew my god-falcon to my lap, her folded claws hard and warm on my thighs. To her black eyes, I whispered, “Aid your queen,” and she did not flinch when I pressed a bone needle into the soft flesh between her toes.
Imhotep held the cup, catching drops as golden and clear as sun. Exalted sky mixed with crawling foulness, a blasphemy that hissed and spat. Imhotep cackled, added a handful of withered leaves, then a dank powder. A vile scent spread, and my god-falcon fell from my lap, thrashing on the ground.
“It is not enough that I drink the poison,” I said. “Octavian will discover soon that I have fled. Death must be quick.”
