“Swift serves his prince. He will come back when Dutiful returns,” I assured her. “They are still negotiating the marriage that will bind our countries in friendship. These things take time.”
“What is wrong with that girl?” Nettle demanded angrily. “Is she without a mind or has she no honor? She should live up to the word she gave. She got her dragon’s head on the hearthstones. I saw to that!”
“So I have heard,” I told her wryly.
“I was so angry with him,” she told me confidentially. “It was the only thing I could think of to do.”
“You were angry with Icefyre?”
“No! With Prince Dutiful. Dither, dither, dither. Does she like me, does she love me, I won’t force her to keep a bargain made under duress, I am so, so very noble… Why does not he tell that fickle Outislander girl, ‘I paid the toll and I’ll cross the bridge.’ I’m sure I would have!” Then her blaze of indignation suddenly dampened as she said, “You don’t think I’m traitorous to speak so of him, do you? I mean no disrespect. I am as loyal a subject to our illustrious prince as anyone. It is just that, when you speak with someone mind to mind, it is hard to remember that he is a prince and far above me. There are times when he seems as thick-witted as one of my brothers, and I just want to shake him!” Despite her earlier protestation of loyalty to her monarch, she suddenly sounded like a girl very exasperated with foolish boys. “So. What did you do?”
“Well, at that time those Outislander people were making much fuss over his not having put the dragon’s head on the hearthstones of her mothershouse. As if rescuing her mother and sister were not worth the weight of a bloody dead animal head stinking in front of your fireplace!” I could feel the effort it took her to restrain herself. “Mind you, I only know of these things as I relay them to the Queen. I am the one who must stand before her each morning and pass on such tidings as they send through me. Does he think that is pleasant? But it occurred to me one dawn, after leaving my queen solemn and heavy of heart because the marriage might not happen at all, that perhaps there was something I could do. Despite her bluster and threats, I know Tintaglia well. Perhaps because of those things, I know her well. So, as she had pestered me, disturbing my dreams whenever I slept, so I began to do to her. For in all her comings and goings from my sleep, she had worn a sort of path that I could follow back to her. If that makes sense to you.”
“It does. But I still marvel that anyone would dare ‘pester’ such a creature.”
“Oh, in the dream world, we are well matched, as I think you might remember. I doubt she would fly all the way here just to trample a mere human. And unlike me, she prefers to sleep heavily after she has eaten or mated. So, those were precisely the times I chose to bother her.”
“And you asked her to ask Icefyre to return to Mayle Isle and put his head down on the Narcheska’s hearth?”
“Asked her? No. I demanded it. And when she said she would not, I said it was because she could not, that despite all humans had done to rescue him, Icefyre was too petty to acknowledge the debt. And that she durst not make him do it, for though she claims to be a queen, she allowed him to master and drive her. I said that her mating must have addled her brains. That put her into a froth, I can tell you.”
“But how did you know it would?”
“I didn’t. I just got angry and said what first came to me.” I felt her sigh. “It’s a fault I have, one that has not made me popular in this court. I am too swift of tongue. But I think it is the best way to speak to a dragon. I told her that if she could not make Icefyre do what was right then she needn’t flaunt about so high-and-mighty. I hate it when people lord over you when you know that, given a good scratch, they’re no better than you are.” She paused, then added, “Or dragons. In all the legends, they are wise, or incredibly powerful or—”
“They are incredibly powerful,” I interrupted her. “I assure you of that!”
“Perhaps. But Tintaglia, in some ways, she’s like… me. Sting her pride a bit and she has to prove she can do whatever you’ve told her she can’t. She’s a nag, or worse, a bully, when she thinks she can get away with it. And just because she lives so long and was born remembering so much, she acts as if we are moths or ants, with no lives worth honoring.”
“It sounds as if you’ve had more than one conversation with her in this regard.”
She paused a trifle. “Tintaglia is an interesting creature. I don’t think I’d ever dare call her my friend. She thinks she is, or more accurately, I think she believes I owe her loyalty and duty or worship, simply because she is a dragon. But it is hard to call someone your friend when you know that your death would mean no more to her than a moth flying into a candle means to me. Pftt! Oh, it’s gone. Too bad. As if I were just an animal!” She snatched a flower from a nearby bed as if to tear it apart.
I winced. She sensed it.
“No, I meant like a bug or a fish. Not like a wolf.” Then, as if the thought had only just come to her, “You aren’t as I see you in my mind. I know that now. I know you aren’t a wolf. I mean, I don’t think of you as just an animal. Did I hurt your feelings?” Hastily, she restored the flower to its broken stem.
She had, but I didn’t think I could explain it to myself, let alone her. “It’s fine. I know what you meant.”
“And when you come back with the others, I’ll finally get to meet you and see you as you are?”
“When I come back, it’s very likely we’ll meet.”
“But how will I know you?”
“I’ll tell you it’s me.”
“Good.” Hesitantly she added, “I missed you while you were gone. I wanted to talk to you, when they told me my father was dead. But I couldn’t find you. Where did you go?”
“Someone very important to me was in trouble. I went to help him. But now that’s all settled, and we’ll be coming home soon.”
“Someone important to you? Will I meet him?”
“Of course. I think you’ll like him.”
“Who are you?”
I wasn’t expecting the question just then. It took me off balance. I didn’t want to tell her that I was FitzChivalry or Tom Badgerlock. I found myself saying, unplanned, “I’m someone who used to know your mother, before she met Burrich and married him.”
Her reaction was not what I expected. “You’re that old?” She was shocked. “And I think I just got older,” I told her, laughing.
But she did not laugh with me. Her reply was stiff. “Then I suppose that when you return, you are more like to be my mother’s friend than mine.”
There was a complication I had not counted on. Jealousy rang green in her thoughts. I tried to stem it. “Nettle, I have long cared about both of you. And will continue to do so.”
Even colder, she asked, “Will you try to take my father’s place with her?”
I felt a blundering fool. I groped for an answer and then forced myself to face a truth I’d been avoiding. “Nettle. They were together for, what, sixteen years? They shared seven children. Do you think anyone could take his place with her?”
“Just so you understand that,” she replied, somewhat mollified. And then she dismissed me with “Now I must clear my dreams of you in case the Prince wishes to find me. Almost every night, he or Lord Chade has words I must bear to the Queen. I get little time to make my own dreams anymore. Good night, Shadow Wolf.” And then her fragrant garden and gentle twilight world faded away from me and I was left in the darkness. It took a short time for me to realize I was not asleep at all, but was lying on the floor of the Black Man’s cave, staring into shadows dimly lit by the embers in his fireplace. I thought over what I had told Nettle, and decided that I had been foolish to let her know that I had once loved Molly. And how could I not have foreseen that Molly’s children, including Nettle, might see me as an interloper in their household? I felt discouragement wash over me, and considered a total retreat from all of it.