I’m afraid I lost my temper, then. Forgive me—there are only so many times I can watch a man insult you. I dropped the reins and shoved thebastard hard, with both hands. His boots slid in the mud, and he landed on his back with a damp, comic slap. He floundered, swearing, and I stepped forward—
“Owen,” you said, softly chiding. I discovered that my fist was raised, and that it held Vivian’s slim silver knife. I lowered it, somewhat sullenly.
You knelt down beside the man, studying his haggard, hate-whittled features. One cheek was concave, where he was missing several molars, and his head was covered in glassy pink scars, as from burns.
You looked at those scars and asked, calmly, “Who did you lose, at the Bastion? A son?” The man’s face warped with fresh fury, and you said, “Ah, two sons. Were I you, I would spit in my face, too.”
The man’s mouth worked, soundlessly. He looked suddenly less like a man than like a walking wound, still weeping.
“Would it help if I told you I, too, lost my children?” Your voice now was musing, almost disinterested. “That I, too, dream of them every night? And when I wake, I think: If I cannot have them back, then God give me revenge for the loss of them?”
A shadow seemed to pass over me as you spoke, a premonitory chill, like a sudden cloud.But we will,I thought, a little desperately.We will get them back.And if we didn’t—God save the queen.
The man was staring at you, but sightlessly, without comprehension. You clucked your tongue. “Well. It’s too late and too little, yet still”—you bowed your head formally—“I am sorry, sir, for the grief I brought to your house.” You unhooked your purse and set it humbly by his feet. “It is not a debt that can be paid, I know, but—”
The man kicked the purse away and hissed something in Hyllish. It sounded like some variation ofKeep your fucking money, worm-feeder.
Behind him, his wife and daughters had gathered fearfully. The coins in the bag chimed as he kicked it, and one of the women made a small, hungering sound, quickly choked.
You plucked the purse from the mud and stood, weighing it in one hand. You addressed the women. “Do you have any quilts or furs to sell, good ladies? The weather will turn soon, and he whines like a babe in the cold.” You gestured at me with your chin.
I scowled at you—you would whine, too, if you’d watched your own fingers turn black—but when the women returned with a pair of matted yellow sheepskins, I rolled them gratefully beneath my arm.
You asked the oldest of the women what it would cost us. She tilted herchin and said, in accented Mothertongue, “Everything you have,” and I knew she hated you just as much as her husband did.
You handed the whole purse to her and turned away, leading Hen.
I lingered. I said, loud enough that the whole of the ragged village might hear, “If you need to run, run south to the forest. They call it the Queen’s Wood, now, but they won’t soon.” I looked toward you, and their eyes followed mine. “You will find protection there, from all comers, for as long you need it.”
I followed you away from that place, and hoped fervently that I would never see it again.
Seven days later, you fought the last dragon of Dominion.
You had confessed to me, long since, that dragons were not the fell demons I knew from folklore—and yet you still tried to make me stay behind.
“Oh, for the love of God,” I said, disgustedly. “Not again.”
You frowned at me in obscure alarm. “Have I ever failed, in all the times I’ve slain this dragon?”
“No, but—”
“Have you not read the stories? Everything I do, I do alone.”
I said, through gritted teeth, “Not anymore you don’t. Not ever again.”
You came closer to me, and I blinked rapidly, like a man staring at the sun. It was the first time in nine years I’d seen you in your full armor, and the sight of it struck me like a hammer to the skull. You were a hero stepped straight from myth, shining and true, and you were a mortal woman, scarred and weary, and God forgive me for trying so hard to separate the two.
You bowed your forehead to mine and said, softly, “Do not ask me to risk you, too.” Then, more desperately, “Stay.”
I tilted my face upward, brushing my lips against yours, and whispered, “Make me.”
In the end you made me carry your shield and ordered me to stay six paces behind you. I waited outside the shallow, stinking cavern while you ducked inside. I heard a hissing sound, the thrash of scale against stone, and then nothing. I waited for that awful, keening death cry, but it never came.
You emerged a few seconds later, bleeding freely from a scrape across your brow, grinning like a child with a stolen sweet. You tossed the grail to me, said, “Quickly, now,” and we ran together back down the mountainside.
Later, as we rode away from Cloven Hill, I asked, “Why did she want them all dead, do you think? The dragons, I mean.”
You snorted, cynically. “Because it kept a lot of restless young bastards busy, probably.” You shrugged, plate metal moving against my back. “Or because it made my story that much grander, if it was the very last one that I killed. Or only because they were—” You hesitated, casting about for the right words. “Out of her reach, beyond any law or border. To see a dragon in flight was to see something… free.”
