Michael Stackpole - When Dragons Rage

“I suppose it was not.” The princess resheathed her sword in the scabbard hanging on the back of her chair, then pointed with her left hand to Perrine. “You remember my companion, Perrine.”

The old woman looked the Gyrkyme up and down, as if viewing a dullard servant who had just broken a valuable dish. “Yes, of course. You are well?”

“Yes, Grand Duchess.”

“Splendid. You will leave us now.”

Alexia snarled. “She is not a servant. She is my sister.”

That comment brought an answering snarl to Tatyana’s thin upper lip, which was only calmed with apparent effort. “Your sister , indeed, child. Well, I need to speak with you, and I would save you the embarrassment of doing so before your… sister ?

Peri just blinked her big amber eyes innocently and Alexia wanted to laugh. Anyone else would have withered under Tatyana’s frigid blue gaze, but Perrine paid her no attention. She would only leave if she desired to be absent, or if Alexia asked her to go. That her presence would irritate the Grand Duchess was ample inducement for her to want to stay.

The princess shook her head. “Anything you say to me she will be told. I have no secrets from her.”

Tatyana’s eyes widened for a moment. “None?”

Alyx hesitated. She’d not told Peri about the Communion of Dragons, primarily because she could not. That inability to share did eat at Alyx a little, but if Peri noticed anything was wrong, she said nothing.

Tatyana’s question was not directed at the Communion, however, but something the old woman found far more important. The Crown Circle, based on a vision Tatyana had had, decreed that every Okrans noble in exile should, at the age of fifteen, undertake a “dream raid,” in which they entered Okrannel and spent a night on their native soil. The dreams they had that night were viewed as having the clairvoyant power of the Norrington Prophecy. Raiders, when they returned to Yslin and the Crown Circle, were bid to share their dreams only with the circle of elders. For Alexia to have told Perrine about her dreams would have been a treason more serious than Crow’s in the eyes of her great-grandaunt.

Alexia nodded slowly. “I share with her my heart, my mind, my hopes, and many of my dreams, but not all.”

Tatyana appeared to be momentarily mollified. She raised a hand and one of the Guards entered the room, secured the chair Alyx had been using, then offered it to the Grand Duchess. She sat demurely, then looked up at her great-grandniece. “I came as soon as I heard the absurd claim that you have married this Crow. Who is he?”

Alyx folded her arms across her belly and leaned back against the wall. “You met him in Yslin, Aunt Tatyana. The night of the reception for General Adrogans. The man who fetched me wine.”

“Your servant ? Alexia, how could you do that? He is not a noble; he is nothing. And then he turns out to be the Traitor Hawkins? He murdered your father, you know.”

“He did nothing of the kind.”

The old woman’s eyes became bitter. “You were barely alive then.”

“And you weren’t at Fortress Draconis.”

“No, but I was present when the world’s rulers learned what happened there. Only your father stood against a sullanciri . Hawkins could have saved him, but he ran. After your father died, he returned with the sword that slew the sullanciri , but it was too late. And he delayed, deliberately, because he hated your father for being all the things he could not be.”

The venom in Tatyana’s voice shocked Alyx. She’d long thought of her great-grandaunt as bitter, but never before had she heard such vitriol coursing through the woman’s words. Tatyana had taken Prince Kirill’s death hard. But while she was a bitter woman, she had previously reserved her bile for those who stood between her and the plans to liberate Okrannel.

Tatyana’s nostrils flared angrily. “Some will say he was but a child then. Others will excuse things because of the nature of the time or the sullanciri‘ s magick, but Hawkins himself said he regretted your father’s death. Had you heard him, Alexia, heard him then , not now—not after he has had a quarter century to practice his lies and justify things in his mind—you’d have known he regretted his actions at Fortress Draconis.“

“Enough!” Alyx pushed off from the wall and slammed her closed fist on the table, making the chess pieces dance and topple. “I will not have you saying that of Crow. I will not have you saying that of my husband”

Tatyana’s eyes grew huge. “By the gods, Alexia, you are not carrying his child!” The old woman held a skeletal hand out toward her, the fingers clawed and trembling.

“Enough, Aunt Tatyana, enough!” Alexia gave in to temptation and rubbed a hand over her belly as she had seen many a pregnant woman do. “If you came here to hector me, you’ve made a fine start.”

The old woman’s voice did not soften, but shrank to a whisper. “I came here to remind you of your duty to your nation. You know, as do I, that when we liberate Okrannel—when you liberate our homeland—you will be placed on the throne. While our nation has prospered somewhat in exile, we both know that our resources are insufficient to allow us to rebuild. Svoin is gone, and re-creating it will bankrupt us. You, however, are the gateway to a dynasty. Your union with a Southlands princeling would bring us what we need to rise again.”

Alexia laughed and Peri joined her, though softly. “Who would you have me marry, Aunt Tatyana? Linchmere? King Augustus has no eligible sons. Savarre might, but is too far away to trade; likewise for any nation save Saporicia, Jerana, and Gurol. The first two of them are without possibilities, and while Prince Joachim of Gurol is an option, Gurol is almost as poor as Okrannel.”

Her aunt shook her head. “You overlook the obvious: Erlestoke of Oriosa.”

“He remained behind at Fortress Draconis. His father says he is dead.”

The old woman shrugged her shoulders. “Scrainwood is not all-seeing, Alexia.”

Whereas you are ? Alexia swallowed the barb. “And you think my being married to Crow will prevent a liaison? Erlestoke, praise the gods if he yet lives, has a lover and a child by her. Would that not make him even less desirable than me?”

“Don’t be a silly girl, Alexia. You know the way of the world. Arrangements can be made. Annulments may be had.”

Alexia let her violet eyes harden. “Very well, let arrangements be made, if I survive the war. If I liberate Okrannel.”

Tatyana hissed and darted a hooded glance at Peri. “You will liberate Okrannel. You know that.”

A shiver ran down Alexia’s back. The emphasis in her great-grandaunt’s words took her back to her meeting with the Crown Circle after the dream raid. She had stood there and explained to them, in exquisite detail, the series of battles she would lead against Chytrine’s troops. She had told them of new warmages that she would field, and how the battles would run. She insisted she would be victorious and had impressed them all with her knowledge of warfare. They had taken heart in her dreams and in her skills, hence the hope of all Okrans exiles rested with her.

“Yes, Aunt Tatyana, I do know; therefore, I know there will be time to make these arrangements of which you speak. I am not mindless of my duty to my nation, but I am also very mindful of my duty to my friends.”

The old woman’s thin lips pressed together into a line, then she slowly nodded. “I see. So this is a sham?”

Alyx lifted her chin. “We have slept together. Scrainwood’s people will tell you that.”