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  This story is for Jenella DuRousseau, wherever she is, for always and always.

  But since, for so many reasons, it would never have reached anyone at all without the aid of my beloved friend Kathleen Hunt, this story is also for her.

  PROLOGUE

  The warning came in the form of a great wind, sudden and cold, sweeping out of the western mountains on a perfectly bland and cloudless summer day. Along with it came the charcoal-burners, the trappers, and the rest of the forest folk—woodcutters, swineherds, herbwives, even the occasional hermit and more occasional outlaw—rushing to seek shelter in the nearby village. The villagers eagerly took them all in, glad of more hands to share in hastily battening down doors, windows, shelves, and cellars, and hanging stones from the eaves and edges of thatched roofs, in hopes of holding their houses together against the rising wind. As they worked, they prayed it might indeed be only wind.

  The village’s three Wise Women—a larger town would have had as many as seven—were the only inhabitants bold enough to stand exposed in the fields on the mountain-facing side of the village. Their hair and garments whipped behind them as they watched the forest bend and twist as if wrenched between invisible hands. The air was thick now with dust and twigs and torn leaves, and over the growing howl they could hear tree limbs snap and splinter with a sound like cracking bones.

  The Wise Women watched, and worried, and debated.

  “This is no storm,” said Uska, youngest of the three, her one good eye searching the oddly clear sky. “The Kings return.”

  “Nonsense,” replied Yairi. At sixty-three, she was Uska’s elder by thirty years. She never missed a chance to hint that Uska had attained her place too soon, and with insufficient testing. “The Kings passed before you were born, and none of their progeny could do this. Besides, this wind is cold. I remember the Kings. The wind of their passage was always hot, almost too hot to breathe, as if their wings were made of stolen sun. This fury is another matter altogether. Some faraway shift in the land or sea, perhaps, echoing its way to us across the distance. Watch. It will shake itself out and fade.”

  “What great lurch or tide, no matter how distant, moves trees without touching the sky? It is the Kings. We must light the beacons, so we might yet be noticed and avoided. We must prepare the rune arrows, to ask forgiveness and beg them pass us by.”

  “You are young and coarse, and lack understanding.” Yairi made no attempt to hide her condescension. “The world has many mysteries. Is that not so, Brugge?”

  The oldest of the Wise Women held her bony right hand out flat, wobbling it slightly this way and that: maybe yes, maybe no. Her skin was almost transparent with age. She frowned at her companions and breathed in twice, preparing to speak, but before she could begin, a tangle of crosscurrents stilled the air for a moment. In the sudden hush a new sound came to them from the forest: a low, dark rumble that rose and fell in waves, and seemed to be made of many other noises all blurred and jumbled together. When the wind rose again the sound was dulled, but they could still hear it, growing louder. It was as if all the lightning in the world had been bridled and something now rode it toward their village.

  Brugge’s sure stance and undimmed eyes belied the count of her years, which only she remembered. But uncertainty colored her voice, and this change in the fixed star of their hierarchy frightened her listeners more than either could admit in the other’s company.

  “Shoot your arrows at will, sister, for whatever you think they are worth. Light your beacons as you choose. And you, Yairi, so quick to dismiss strangeness, so anxious to quell your own troubled thoughts: I do not believe we will be laughing about this tonight, or tomorrow, or at any time to come.”

  The gale grew steadily wilder, and for a moment all three women peered keenly back at the village, dreading to see a hearth fire drawn up even one chimney, to leap from housetop to housetop, setting the whole village ablaze. But there was no sign of that disaster, at least.

  “The world has turned noisily in its sleep, like some babe disturbed in the cradle, fussing and crying until it forgets the dreams that troubled it. The Kings do not come now to harm us in their vast indifference. Something else is loosed, something that stinks of magic.”

  “Aye? And what will he do?”

  As venerable as she insisted on being regarded by her companions, it was extremely rare for Yairi ever to challenge Brugge’s authority so directly; she had always been far more likely to snap sideways at her, and then to back away with a quick, inaudible mumble. “When that one comes once again to challenge our supposed wisdom, our legendary power for the very last time… how do you imagine we will face him then, my sister?” The last two words flashed and bit with contempt, as they were precisely meant to do.

  The oldest of the three Wise was silent for such a long moment that Yairi began to shrink hard away from her, while trying her best not to show fear. None of the other Wise had ever seen Brugge in a rage; and Yairi suddenly became utterly aware that she did not ever want to be the first. But the older woman’s voice was quite calm when she spoke again, which young Uska thought was quite the most terrible thing of all. Brugge finally shook her white head in distaste. “What we will do,” she said at last, “is what we Wise always do when wisdom fails. We will chant and charm in all the languages we know, using every prayer, every incantation at our disposal, conjuring to make what approaches leave us in peace. And it… it will do whatever it will do. Begin.”

  They knelt together, Brugge’s authority still strong enough to bind them. And where else, in truth, could they go? What else, in fact, might they possibly do?

  Hours of chanting passed without effect. The sky was still far too clear come nightfall; beneath its dark ceiling the air raged, and the noise from the woods grew harsher and louder than the world might possibly contain. Though the three women screamed their secrets into the onrushing wind, seeking to blunt its fury, they could no longer hear each other or themselves. Their words were torn and scattered as if they had never had form or meaning.

  And then there were no words at all.

  ONE

  Robert dreamed…

  It was The Dream—the one that visited him so often that it had long since lost any terrifying aspect and become as drearily predictable as the ones in which he was being driven out of town by a jeering, laughing mob, or found himself suddenly naked and pink as a shrimp while kneeling to court Violette-Elisabeth, the baker’s daughter. Even so, The Dream left him feeling strangely thrilled—in a shivery sort of way—when he woke to his mother’s call from downstairs: “Gaius Aurelius! Gaius Aurelius Constantine!”

  “Not now, not now,” he muttered into his pillow, turning over in forlorn pursuit of a few last fragments of sleep. But Adelise was on the bed already, pulling the coverlet back with her tiny fangs and tickling his ear with her forked tongue. He could hear clumsy Fernand scrabbling for purchase on the shaky bedstead, which meant that Lux would be next, and then Reynald—poor little Reynald, always last in everything.

  The call came again. “Gaius Aurelius Constantine Heliogabalus!”

  He tried to shout, “I’m awake!” but only managed a croak this time, as he forced himself to sit up. What was in that new batch at Jarold’s last night? “Get away, Adelise, I’m awake, I’m awake…. Oh dear God, I’m dead but I’m awake.” Reynald’s long scarlet head appeared above the edge of the bed, accompanied by a piercing cry for attention. “Reynald, keep it down, I’m not well.”

  “Gaius Aurelius Constantine Heliogabalus Thrax, it’s chestnut pancakes—and if you’re not here in the kitchen in two minutes, it’ll be hog slop!” The three pigs rooting disconsolately in the small pasture out back could no more have passed as hogs than Robert could have, but Odelette Thrax was an optimist in all things. “And there’s a job waiting, Gaius Aurelius—”

  “Don’t call me that!” It was enough of a bellow to send all four of the dragons scurrying as he lurched out of bed and began stiffly fumbling his way into his heavy working clothes. Robert’s mother alternated between being his best friend and a headache to dwarf the one he already had—sometimes she filled both positions simultaneously—but at all times he was extremely fond of her cooking.

  Adelise leaped to his shoulder as he clumped down the stair, her claws skidding on the dragonskin vest that he always wore to a job, and whose origins she and the others never seemed to sense. He hated the vest and all the rest of the armor of his trade as he had never hated any item of clothing—all right, except for the silly green forester’s cap that his mother had made him wear as a boy—but his customers took confidence in his appearance, as some kind of emblem of his expertise, and it did have practical benefits in a day’s work, for all its uncomfortable stiffness. He reached up awkwardly to pet the carefully balanced dragonlet, feeling the feather softness of her deep green scales, which would not turn tough, almost impermeable, for another year yet. The women like them just like this at Dragon Market. The men want the yearlings.

  The thought of D
ragon Market roiled his empty stomach as he sat down at his mother’s table. She was at the stove with her back to him, cooking what amounted to her third breakfast of the morning. Robert’s younger brothers, Caralos and Hector, were of course already out and at work behind a neighboring farmer’s oxen, having left at dawn. Now Patience and Rosamonde were racing through their own meal, late for lessons as usual, too hurried even to greet him.

  Robert loved his younger sisters, but he also envied them painfully. He had always thought it unjust that village girls got to be properly educated, while boys must apprentice early, and were lucky if they were taught to read and write at home, as he had been. He often peered over his sisters’ shoulders while they were studying, until they complained and their mother shooed him away.

  By the time Patience and Rosamonde had left for the schola, trailing promises of good behavior they would keep only if absolutely necessary, Robert had revised his opinion of the day. Chestnut pancakes, browned perfectly at the edges… pomegranate syrup… fresh milk… there might be something said for living after all. Wolfing down his third cake, he asked, with his mouth full, “Who’s the engagé?” He never referred to the people who hired him as customers, that being a term favored by those in trade, the people who sold things, rather than renting out their skills. In all honesty, he didn’t actually care, but it mattered a great deal to his mother. She was intensely aware that her late husband’s work, now Robert’s work by inheritance, assigned them to the lowest rung of a steep and unforgiving social ladder.

  “Medwyn and Norvyn, behind the granary.” Odelette turned then, frowning as she saw Adelise on his shoulder. “Does she have to hear this?”

  “Go help the others with the beds, Adelise,” Robert said gently. The dragonlet flicked out her tongue and spread her minuscule wings, their inner vanes flushed purple as thunderclouds, then glided to the floor and scuttled up the stairs to Robert’s bedroom. The four of them always did his bed first, no matter how often he tried to get them to alter their routine. Sometimes they even tried to make the bed with him still in it.

  When he was sure the little dragon was out of earshot, Robert turned back to his mother. “Medwyn and Norvyn? That’s going to be nasty. Another caud of Serpens flamma vegrandis, I’ll lay odds—it’d serve them right, not letting me sweep for eggs the last time. Five, what, six seasons in a row, is it? You think they’d learn.”

  “They didn’t like your father. They like you. Maybe you can convince them.”

  “Not much chance of that so long as they both keep the books. They’re too busy cheating each other to know a bargain, once nothing’s blistering their ankles. Ah well,” he sighed as he slid his seat back, “more food on the table, and new scrolls for the twins. There are worse livings.”

  But later, after he’d left the house to gather up Ostvald and the day’s tools, he had to confess to himself that he really couldn’t think of any.

  TWO

  The Great Hall of Bellemontagne was full of princes.

  It wasn’t that difficult to fill the Great Hall with princes, because it wasn’t that big of a Great Hall. People had generally been smaller when it was first built, a good four centuries before; and besides, the Castle of Bellemontagne, while it had undoubtedly seen better days, couldn’t remember them. The fireplace, open on both sides, was so remarkably constructed that it could roast an ox without throwing the least bit of heat to those huddling as close as they dared. The roof—easily high enough for a cathedral, if considerably narrower, and not nearly so gracefully curved—had over the years been home to thousands of transient birds and half again as many bats, as the cracked and begrimed portraits of royal ancestors along the walls bore mute testimony. Every sort of nameless vermin squeaked and creaked and rustled along the walls, or else inside them; and the princes crowded closely together on their seats, for comfort and reassurance as well as body heat. Somebody was heard to growl, “Stop kicking!” but for the most part the gathering was a quiet one, with most conversations going on under fiercely hissed breaths. Each prince had his own axe to grind, sometimes literally, and everyone else’s ox to gore.

  “No, you cannot borrow my hauberk—get your own! What do you need a hauberk for, anyway?”

  “Battle? You’re going to tell her you were in a battle? You’ve never been in any damned battle!”

  “You might as well go on home—you’re way too short for her. I despise—I mean, she despises short men.”

  Princes, as a rule, are not raised to be paragons of patience. Stuffed four to the bench and desperately uncertain of their pecking order, they did not show well. Indeed, most had started to wilt within minutes of their arrival, and some, having been waiting there for days, despaired of ever making themselves presentable again. The most depressed of the lot positively drooped; there was simply no other word for it.

  “Who’s that chap? The tall one, with the cheekbones—I don’t care for the look of him, not at all….”

  “You slept in the servants’ quarters last night? They gave me the pantry, practically to myself—”

  “But I had a bed! All right, a bench…”

  Good manners inevitably decay under siege, especially when an aggressor wakes to the fact that the walls being breached are his own. Even an eldest son can take umbrage then, doubting the value of royal purpose and the preordained blessings of his fate.

  “I don’t know how they get to call this a kingdom. We’ve got backcountry baronies bigger than this place—”

  “We’ve got bigger backyards—”

  “So does the Princess, if she’s anything like the one I was courting in Malbrouck last week… oh. Oh my!”

  “Oh MY!”

  The Princess Cerise had just swept into the hall, deigning at last to grant this month’s batch of princes the gift of her presence. She was accompanied only by the castle’s chamberlain, a small, portly man who always looked more put-upon than he felt, and knew how to use that to his advantage. He carried with him a block of stretched parchment and a charcoal stylus.

  The waiting princes came to their feet as one creature, smiling eagerly in Cerise’s direction while hurriedly straightening each ribbon, button, medallion, decoration, ornament, epaulet, and feather in sight. One tried to snug up his father’s best formal oyster-pearl garters from where they’d slipped, without being noticed, but he was too late; and another clearly didn’t realize that his capotain no longer covered his bald spot.

  None of them spoke. The rules of polite behavior in this circumstance were absolute, and only the Princess could break the silence, however long it might go on. But inside their heads, in diverse languages, the princes hummed like a plucked lute with variations of a single thought: Goed/God/Gott/Mon Dieu/Good heavens, she’s bloody breathtaking! Unfortunately for them, she knew it well, and considered it more trouble than it was worth.

  Cerise seated herself in the Great Hall’s one comfortable chair, which was on a dais elevated just high enough to let her see all her suitors clearly. The chamberlain took post, standing, at her side, parchment and stylus at the ready.

  After a perfectly calculated pause, to let the moment sink in, Cerise spoke. Her voice was low and warm, clear, and—she had been well-coached—not too amused as she sang out, “Good morning, gentlemen. I do hope everyone’s taken a number?”

  Everyone had, but even so there was a good deal of muttering and trampling on feet as they sorted things out. Cerise waited patiently until order had been more or less restored, and the princes lined up for review. First was the young man with the cheekbones, second son of King Denisov of Landoak.

  His name was Lucan. He was tall, handsome, sincere, broad-shouldered, slim-waisted, well turned out, and possessed of precisely the brains of a rutabaga; sadly, his cheekbones were the sharpest thing about him. Not two questions into his interview—the easy starter questions that Cerise always used to begin these sessions, like “Have you a horse? And “Oh, what’s its name?”—he had gone all sideways and tongue-tied on her. Which was no more than she had expected, but she heard him out courteously just the same, before smiling sadly and banishing him to the rear of the assembly with a polished wave of her hand. In desperation he finally found his voice, crying out, “Princess, I have slain the manticore of the Gharial Mountains, all to do honor to your name. It is being stuffed and mounted at present, but if you wait, I will have it shipped directly—”