But what I want to say is—
Isobelle, please.
As Gwen kept her eyes resolutely on a floating ember until it vanished against the indigo velvet above them, she could have kicked herself black and blue for not letting Isobelle finish that sentence.
Then a gust of flame shot out inches from Gwen’s face, close enough that the heat struck her before she knew what she was witnessing. A lithe young dancer, his chest bare and his leggings leaving little to the imagination, bounced around in front of them, sipped from a flask, and then shot another jet of fire up into the sky.
Belatedly, Gwen realized she was clutching at Isobelle, and her throat was raw from some sort of shriek. Isobelle, for her part, seemed rather more collected, and was doing her damnedest to hide the way the corners of her mouth wanted to dance.
Gwen carefully loosened her grip on Isobelle’s arm. “Whoops.”
Isobelle raised an eyebrow, her grin positively lascivious. “Hold on to me all you want, young lady,” she said in a low voice. “I’m sturdy, I can take it.”
Gwen snorted, rolling her eyes a fraction. “Just don’t tell the other knights I screamed.”
Isobelle mimed locking her lips shut before throwing away the imaginary key, then pulled Gwen on to look at another stall.
Gwen looked down at the spot where Isobelle’s hand rested on her arm. “Er—Isobelle,” she started, not completely certain whereshe wished to steer the sentence. “Last night, you started to say something and I cut you off. Did you—”
“Ooh!” exclaimed Isobelle, her head lifted and turned to one side. She’d evidently been listening for something going on elsewhere in the festival. She began tugging at Gwen’s arm, dragging her off in the direction she was looking. “I think we’re just in time! Come, I’ve been so wanting you to see this.”
The emotion tangling Gwen’s response into a wordless murmur of assent was rather difficult to pinpoint. Frustration, certainly. But also a heavy dose of relief.
Just be glad everything is as it was,she told herself sternly.And enjoy what connection you have as co-conspirators.
Isobelle led her to a space that had been cleared on the slope of the hill above, dominated at the far end by a group of musicians. To judge from the crowd gathering around the area, some favorite event of the festival was about to take place.
The drummer had begun a low, pulsing beat. The crowd rather melted in front of Isobelle to let her and Gwen up to the front, either recognizing the tournament’s sacrifice and her reputation, or else assuming that the size and number of layers and frills on her dress meant she should be allowed to do as she wished.
Gwen had a flash of insight—wasthatwhy Isobelle wore such insanely over-the-top dresses?
The drummer added a second, lesser, syncopated beat that made Gwen’s blood sing strangely, until she recognized it for what it was: a heartbeat. Slow, decorous, far more languorous than any human heartbeat, but a heartbeat nonetheless.
Anancientheartbeat.
The hairs had begun to lift all along the back of Gwen’s neckbefore the first dancers emerged from the crowd. Their costumes were a riot of color—some in brightest red, orange, and yellow, and others in more muted shades of green, brown, burnished gold, and maroon. Something deep and primal and instinctual was signaling Gwen at the sight of those colors, though she could not have explained why.
The dancers began to move, in seeming chaos at first. Then the rest of the musicians began to play, adding to the pulsing heartbeat thescreelof a reeded woodwind, the low bleat of a deep horn, and several layers of strings weaving the sounds together. As if the music were the start of a spell, the chaotic movements of the dancers coalesced into one single, fluid shape that undulated in the firelit night with eerie realism.
A dragon.
The creature roared out of three dozen throats at once, and out of its mouth spilled the dancers costumed in the colors of flame. The slope of the hill they moved on was nearly invisible in the darkness, and the illusion of a three-dimensional dragon taking form before their audience’s eyes was stunningly complete. The movements of the dancers were so perfectly synchronized that it was impossible to see them as separate people instead of one massive, deadly beast. So much so that when the dancers scattered and coalesced again, in a new place, as if the dragon had taken wing and flown to the opposite edge of the cleared space, the audience members closest to them screamed and leapt back.
Gwen’s heart was pounding, her muscles demanding action. Some instinct from deep within her wanted to reach for a weapon, even as the rest of her mind tried frantically to remind her that what she was witnessing was a dance, a celebration, a mere echo ofages long past. That there were no dragons, not anymore.
The dragon veered sharply toward them, and the flame dancers shot out in a riot of reds and yellows. Isobelle, laughing, leapt back, but Gwen couldn’t move. One of the dancers caught her eye and grinned knowingly—then she tugged lightly at the edge of Gwen’s skirt, as if to say,See? Now you’re dead.And then she skipped off to rejoin the rest of the dragon.
A new instrument joined the musicians at the high end of the hill: the bright, brassy glare of a trumpet. From the side of the square came a lone dancer, not a part of the living, breathing creature the others had become. This one wore a suit of armor—or, at least, silver-threaded leggings and flowing drapes that suggested the overlapping panels of a suit of armor—and a helmet.
The knight.
He came wearing a sword at his belt and with a long, gleaming lance tucked under one arm. He charged the dragon, which scattered and coalesced again on the other side of the clearing. The dragon roared at the knight, spitting flames that reached out toward him with grasping arms—but he leapt and dodged, landing and rolling easily back to his feet.
For a long stretch of heartbeats, they were perfectly matched. The knight could not charge fast enough to strike the dragon before it fled, and the dragon could not get an angle good enough on the knight to roast him alive.
Gwen’s head spun. Distantly, she realized she’d forgotten to breathe.
Then the dragon twisted the other way during one of the knight’s charges, and it caught the lance in a sweeping blow with one of its arms. The sound it made as it shattered was a screech ofstrings and the deep thump of an ominous drum.
