“Talk?” Marek said. He shoved my arm out of his grip; more water sloshed out over my feet as he stalked away.
The Dragon took the bucket from me, and I followed him back into the barn. “Can we do anything for her?” I asked.
“What is there to be done with a blank slate?” he said. “Give her some time and she may write something new on it. As for bringing back whatever she was—” He shook his head.
Marek sat by the queen the rest of the day; I had glimpses of his hard, downturned face a few times when I came out of the barn. But at least he seemed to accept there wasn’t going to be a sudden miraculous cure. That evening he got up and walked to Zatochek to speak to the village headman; the next day, when Tomasz and Oleg could finally walk as far as the well and back on their own, he gripped them hard by the shoulders and said, “We’ll light a fire for the others tomorrow morning, in the village square.”
Men came from Zatochek to bring us horses. They were wary of us, and I couldn’t blame them. The Dragon had sent word we would come out of the Wood, and he’d told them where to keep us and what signs of corruption to look for, but even so I wouldn’t have been surprised if they’d come with torches instead, to burn us all inside the barn. Of course, if the Wood had taken possession of us, we’d have done worse things than sit in a barn quietly exhausted for a week.
Marek himself helped Tomasz and Oleg up into their saddles before he lifted the queen up to her own, a steady brown mare some ten years old. She sat stiff and inflexible; he had to put her feet one by one into the stirrups. He paused, looking up at her from the ground: the reins hung slack in her manacled hands where he’d given them to her. “Mother,” he tried again. She didn’t look at him. After a moment, his jaw hardened. He took a rope and made a leading rein for her horse, hooked it to his own saddle, and led her on.
We rode behind him to the square and found a tall bonfire assembled and waiting, full of seasoned wood, and all the village in their holiday best standing on the far side. They held torches in their hands. I didn’t know anyone from Zatochek well, but they came occasionally to our market days in spring. A handful of distantly familiar faces looked out at me from the crowd, like ghosts from another life through the faint grey haze of smoke, while I stood opposite them with a prince and wizards.
Marek took a torch himself: he stood by the wood pile with his brand lifted into the air and named every man we had lost, one after another, and Janos at the last. He beckoned to Tomasz and Oleg, and together the three of them stepped forward and thrust their torches into the heaped wood. The smoke came smarting into my eyes and barely-healed throat, and the heat was dreadful. The Dragon watched the fire catch with a hard face and then turned away: I know he didn’t think much of the prince honoring the men he’d led to their deaths. But it loosened something in me to hear all their names.
The bonfire kept burning a long time. The villagers brought out food and beer, whatever they had, and pressed it on us. I crept away into a corner with Kasia and drank too many cups of beer, washing misery and smoke and the taste of the purging-elixir out of my mouth, until finally we leaned against each other and wept softly; I had to hold on to her, because she didn’t dare grip me tight.
The drink made me lighter and more dull at the same time, my head aching, and I snuffled into my sleeves. Across the square, Prince Marek was speaking to the village headman and a wide-eyed young carter. They were standing beside a handsome green wagon, fresh-painted, with a team of four horses, their manes and tails clumsily braided in green ribbons also. The queen was already sitting in the wagon bed, cushioned on straw, with a wool cloak draped over her shoulders. The golden chains of the enchanted yoke caught the sunlight and glittered against her shift.
I blinked a few times at the sun-dazzle, and by the time I began to make sense of what I was looking at, the Dragon was already striding across the square, demanding, “What are you doing?” I climbed to my feet and went to them.
Prince Marek turned even as I came. “Arranging for passage to take the queen home,” he said, pleasantly.
“Don’t be absurd. She needs healing—”
“Which she can get in the capital as easily as here,” Prince Marek said. “I don’t choose to let you lock my mother up in your tower until it pleases you to let her out again, Dragon. Don’t imagine that I’ve forgotten how unwillingly you came with us.”
“You seem ready to forget a great many other things,” the Dragon bit out. “Such as your vows to raze the Wood all the way to Rosya, if we succeeded.”
“I’ve forgotten nothing,” Marek said. “I haven’t the men to help you now. What better way to get you the men you need than by going back to the court to ask my father for them?”
“The only thing you can do at court is parade around that hollow puppet and call yourself a hero,” the Dragon said. “Send for the men! We can’t simply go now. Do you think the Wood won’t make answer for what we’ve done, if we ride away and leave the valley defenseless?”
Marek kept his fixed smile, but it trembled on his face, and his hand worked open and shut upon his sword-hilt. The Falcon smoothly inserted himself between them, laying a hand on Marek’s arm, and said, “Your Highness, while Sarkan’s tone is objectionable, he isn’t mistaken.”
For a moment I thought perhaps he understood, now; perhaps the Falcon had felt enough of the malice of the Wood for himself to realize the threat it made. I looked at the Dragon with surprised hope, but his face was hardening, even before the Falcon turned to him with a graceful inclination of his head. “I think Sarkan will agree that despite his gifts, the Willow exceeds him in the healing arts, and she will be able to aid the queen if anyone can. And it is his sworn duty to hold back the Wood. He cannot leave the valley.”
“Very well,” Prince Marek said at once, even though he was talking through his clenched teeth: a rehearsed answer. They had worked it out between them, I realized in dawning outrage.
Then the Falcon added, “And you in turn must realize, Sarkan, that Prince Marek cannot possibly let you just keep Queen Hanna and your peasant girl here.” He gestured to Kasia, standing beside me. “Of course they must both go to the capital, at once, and face their trial for corruption.”
“A clever piece of maneuvering,” the Dragon said to me afterwards, “and an effective one. He’s right: I don’t have the right to abandon the valley without the king’s leave, and by the law, strictly speaking, they must both stand trial.”
“But it doesn’t have to be this instant!” I said. I darted a look at the queen, sitting listless and silent in the wagon while the villagers piled too many supplies and blankets in around her, more than we would have needed if we’d been going to the capital and back again three times without a stop. “What if we just took her back to the tower, now—her and Kasia? Surely the king would understand—”
The Dragon snorted. “The king’s a reasonable man. He wouldn’t have minded in the least if I’d discreetly whisked away the queen for a convalescence out of anyone’s sight, before anyone had seen her or even knew for certain that she was rescued. But now?” He waved an arm at the villagers. Everyone had gathered in a loose ring near the wagon, at a safe distance, to stare at the queen and whisper bits of the story to each other. “No. He would object greatly to my openly defying the law of the realm before witnesses.”
Then he looked at me and said, “And I can’t go, either. The king might allow it, but not the Wood.”
I stared back at him, hollow. “I can’t let them just take Kasia,” I said, half a plea. I knew this was where I belonged, where I was needed, but to let them drag Kasia off to the capital for this trial, where the law said they might put her to death—and I didn’t trust Prince Marek at all, except to do whatever suited him best.
“I know,” the Dragon said. “It’s just as well. We can’t strike another blow against the Wood without soldiers, and a great number of them. And you’re going to have to get them from the king. Whatever he says, Marek isn’t thinking of anything but the queen, and Solya may not be wicked, but he likes to be too clever for everyone’s good.”
I said finally, a question, “Solya?” The name felt strange on my tongue, moving, like the high shadow of a bird, circling; even as I said it, I felt the brush of a piercing eye.
“It means falcon, in the spell-tongue,” the Dragon said. “They’ll put a name on you, too, before you’re confirmed to the list of wizards. Don’t let them put that off until after the trial; otherwise you won’t have the right to testify. And listen to me: what you’ve done here carries power with it, of a different sort. Don’t let Solya take all the credit, and don’t be shy of using it.”
I had no idea how to carry out any of the instructions he was firing at me: how was I supposed to persuade the king to give us any soldiers? But Marek was already calling for Tomasz and Oleg to mount up, and I didn’t need the Dragon to tell me I was going to have to work it out for myself. I swallowed and nodded instead, and then I said, “Thank you—Sarkan.”
His name tasted of fire and wings, of curling smoke, of subtlety and strength and the rasping whisper of scales. He eyed me and said stiffly, “Don’t land yourself into a boiling-pot, and as difficult as you may find it, try and present a respectable appearance.”
Chapter 17
I didn’t do very well at following his advice.
We were a week and a day riding to the capital, and my horse jerked her head the entire way: step, step, step, and a sudden nervous thrust forward against the bit, pulling my reins and my arms forward, until my neck and my shoulders were hard as stone. I always lagged to the back of our little caravan, and the big iron-bound wagon-wheels kicked up a fine cloud of dust in front of me. My horse added regular sneezing pauses to her gait. Even before we passed Olshanka I was coated in pale grey, sweat clumping the dust into thick brown lines under my fingernails.