You spent another moment communing with your horse, or at least his remains, before crossing to a downed log and laying several limp, furred bodies over the wood. Your knife flashed and dipped, peeling them easy as apples.
I lit a cigarette before the smell of blood could reach me. I ought to ration them, but I’d already whimpered, fainted, and babbled in front of the nation’s greatest hero, and I was rather hoping not to vomit, too. I slouched in the doorway and blew out a long stream of smoke, which rose, switchbacking into the sky. Your eyes followed it.
I twiddled the cigarette at you, obnoxiously. “Lucky Stars. Half sawdust, half tar, a testament to modern manufacturing. Uncommon in this era, I imagine.”
I didn’t know how well I was making myself understood. My mouth produced the odd vowels and archaic syntax of Middle Mothertongue with unnerving ease, as if it had been waiting in some unlit corner of my skull, but I wasn’t sure dry condescension had been invented yet.
Apparently it had, because you made a sound that would be described as a snort in anyone who was not a mythic hero. The little corpses, now stripped pink, steamed faintly in your hands.
“What about these, then?” I tapped my spectacles, now slightly misshapen.
No response.
I fished around in my jacket and brandished the revolver at you, somewhat rashly. “How about this? It’s called agun.See the stamp, just here? The mark of a genuine Saint Sinclair, the finest munitions maker in Dominion.” Still nothing. My voice rose a half octave, whistling through my macerated larynx. “It’s a deadly modern weapon of war. If I pointed it at you, and pulled this little bit here, you would be dead before you could say ‘anachronism.’”
You looked at the revolver briefly, with the tolerant curiosity of a parent being shown a snail shell or a shiny rock, then looked down again. You didn’t say anything.
I put the gun away. “Test me, then. Ask me whatever you like. I know everything that’s ever happened to you.”
That got me a wry, sad smile. “Who doesn’t?”
I have no real temper to speak of—I rarely raise my voice and frequently apologize to people who cut in front of me in queues—but I found a nervy anger rising in me. I had dedicated my life to the legend of Una Everlasting. It was you who sent me to war and you who brought me back, you who stalked my dreams and consumed my days.
And now here you were, the object of all my reverence: a weary, hard-weathered woman who would not even look at me.
I flicked ash forcefully over the threshold. “And do they know everything thatwillhappen? Because I do.”
Your hands went briefly still, fingers cradling an animal skull.
I pressed into the stillness. “Where are you in your story? You’re not young, so you’ve already defeated the False Kings and won the crown for Yvanne. Some of the tales make mention of a ‘great injury’ during the First Crusade—was that your eye?” A hot, uneven glare that I interpreted as ayes.“So. You’re hunting the last dragon, then, and the grail.”
Now you looked away. You staked the animals neatly along the spine and nestled them into the coals of another sullen fire. “It is no secret,” you said, after too long a pause to appear casual. “The Queen did command it so before the whole court.”
“But then—what are you doinghere? This isn’t where you find it.”
“And I suppose you, a madman, know where the last dragon dwells?” you drawled, removing all doubt about the existence of dry condescension.
“Yes,” I answered promptly, and was pleased by the fractional widening of your eyes. “It was a subject of some debate—Lazamon’s map was the only record, and he was famously unreliable—but they found the bones in Lysabet I’s reign, and that settled it.” I paused, eyes narrowing. “If you don’t already know where it is… shouldn’t you be out there looking?”
I felt as if the machine of my brain was finally grinding into motion again, after stalling out from sheer shock. Assuming I had truly fallen through time to the era of Una Everlasting and was not suffering a colorful mental breakdown—what were you doing in the woods outside of Queenswald, huddling in the remains of some poor peasant’s hovel? In the ballads and books, you struck forth with pure heart and fiery eye, praying to the Savior to guide your feet true.
Your expression had not changed, but somehow—by the bend of your shoulders or the angle of your neck, by the way your eyes fled from mine—Iknew:“You’re not looking for it at all, are you. You’ve abandoned the quest.” My voice was high, a hoarse accusation. “You can’t. You’re supposed to—youmust—”
“Only one person has the ordering of me.” Said sharply, with one lip peeled up to reveal the white tip of a tooth. “And she is not here.”
“The queen, you mean.” That nervy anger was sharpening, edged with disgust that felt outsized, misdirected. “The queen whose death would mean the end of Dominion. The queen who called for you—her champion, her right hand—as she lay dying?”
“And I answered, as I ever have!” You were on your feet, striding toward me, hands balled into red fists. I was taller than most men, but you stood head and shoulders over me, glaring down at me in a way that made my palms hot.
“Though I swore I would never again ride to battle, I rode out that very night, for her.” Your voice was low and viperous. “Though I had put my sword aside, I took it up once more, for her. Though the hope of the grail is no more than the echo of an echo, the whisper of a whisper—I have scoured the countryside since midsummer. Forher.”
I did not retreat or look away, although I felt the force of your furious despair like a battering wind. I saw your eyes move to my throat, where my pulse beat fast and uneven.
Shame chased the wildness from your face. You took a deliberate stepback. The muscles of your jaw rolled before you said, stiffly, “That is three times now I have frightened you. Forgive me. I sometimes—forget myself.” You unclenched your hands with an effort so visible I expected to hear cartilage popping.
You continued evenly, almost formally, “I have searched, and I have failed. I came here because I had not returned to this place since”—a pause, a drawing up of your shoulders—“the day my fathers were slain. Though I have dreamed of it, these many years.”
These sentences slotted into my mind like keys into locks. I badly wanted a pen and paper.Ha,I would write, and alsoEat it, Harrison,because I was now the only living scholar who could definitively state the location of Una Everlasting’s childhood home.
