Michael Stackpole - Of Limited Loyalty

Owen didn’t remember the details of the fight, and knew he’d soon forget these. What he did remember, however, was being covered in wolf’s blood when Princess Gisella handed him his daughter for the first time. How tiny she had been, bare wisps of black hair on her head, her face flushed. He’d been fighting for her even without having seen her, and he smiled.

Then he saw Catherine looking at him, pure loathing in her eyes. He’d known she did not want to be in Mystria. She’d not spared him the sharp side of her tongue when discussing their new home. It always seemed it was the land she hated, not him. But that night, as she glowered at him, he knew he’d never see love in her eyes again.

That should have saddened him, but it didn’t. There he’d stood, covered in blood, his heart pounding from the fight and from the excitement of seeing his child. He was proud of himself and Mystria, of the people he’d come to love and the opportunity the land provided. His daughter-and in that moment he’d stopped thinking of Miranda as their daughter-would grow up in a place where the measure of her worth would not come from her bloodlines but from what she could do. And while Mystrian society still did view a woman as an extension of her husband-often as property of her husband-no one made the mistake of believing that was all a woman could be.

Bethany Frost, for example, served as an editor for the Frost Weekly Gazette. While there were those who would grumble about how that wasn’t a job for a woman, they were just as likely to argue that she did a damned fine job of editing when outsiders would comment to the contrary. That she edited his book, and Samuel Haste’s most recent-at each author’s personal request, it was known-furthered the esteem in which she was held. Some people did think it a pity that she’d not found herself a husband and hadn’t produced a brood of children-at twenty-five she should have had at least a half-dozen-very few voiced that opinion aloud, and fewer tried to find her a husband. The few suitors who came to pay her court found her to be headstrong and too quick for them.

Catherine, on the other hand, was more than content to define her status based on Owen’s position within Mystria. That became the nugget of her hatred for the new world. In Mystria he was Prince Vlad’s friend, and she was a confidant of Princess Gisella. One could rise no higher in society. But in the eyes of her friends and rivals in Norisle, this meant little. After all, a scullery maid in some Launston pub warranted higher social standing than anyone in Mystria. Their colonial cousins were to be humored and tolerated or pitied and despised. While Catherine reveled in the status she did possess in Mystria, she hated that it meant her standing had fallen below where it had in Norisle when she’d married him.

He turned to a fresh page in his journal, and began writing her a letter. He wasn’t certain that it would ever be found if the wolves got them, or that he would ever let her read it if they didn’t. Still, he had much to say to her. He would make one last attempt to let her know why he loved her and Miranda and Mystria.

He hoped she would understand.

1 May 1767 Prince Haven Temperance Bay, Mystria

Prince Vlad’s spirits soared with Mugwump. Firmly lodged in the saddle, his goggles in place and gloves on his hands, the Prince could not help but smile as the dragon flew lazily over fields and back toward the wurmrest. Mugwump showed no inclination to descend and instead raised his head and gave voice to his joy.

At least, that’s what Prince Vlad assumed he was doing. Since midday, right after Vlad had stopped working on his Mystrian thaumaturgy, Mugwump had begun an odd series of vocalizations. They tended to break at odd places for Vlad, but the howling of dogs and Richard’s putting his hands over his ears suggested the sound just moved into higher registers than Vlad could hear. The string of sounds-and the calls seemed the same every time, deliberately repeated-ended on a rising note making it sound as if the dragon was asking a question. Vlad even timed the intervals between calls, as best he could. They ran roughly a minute, which meant the sound had thirty seconds to travel out and a reply to come back. If Mugwump was asking questions, he was expecting an answer from a creature roughly six and a half miles away.

No replies came, however, and as nearly as Prince Vlad could see, the silence had no effect on Mugwump’s mood. In fact, were he to compare the dragon’s reaction to the call and lack of reply, it would mirror Richard’s concern over something one moment, then his utterly carefree response to something else the next. Still, while they flew, Mugwump tended to vocalize toward the west, with more of a challenging tone to his voice.

During those vocalizations, Mugwump tended to be gliding, and lost altitude. Aside from the first time, the loss was neither abrupt nor quick, but it did seem to surprise the dragon. He flapped his wings a couple of times and they regained the distance they’d lost. Beneath them the buildings had shrunk to something roughly the size of Vlad’s thumbnail. He took note of that fact, even stripping off a glove to make sure the comparison was close to exact. Later he rode out from Prince Haven, took proper measurements of ground features, and calculated how high they actually had flown.

Making observations about distance were about as far as Prince Vlad got. The exhilaration of flying so far exceeded the thrill he’d felt when swimming with the dragon that he could scarce compare them. Granted, the thought of drowning had always dampened the thrill-and the inability to holler happily likewise caused problems-but flying combined freedom and speed with placement in a realm where men were not meant to go. Even the knowledge that were he to fall off or Mugwump to plunge from the sky, he would die, could not kill the happiness bursting within him.

He kept his hands very light on the reins, but Mugwump responded when he tugged. The only time he had difficulty was after Mugwump had shrieked toward the west and awaited a reply. After the requisite interval, however, Mugwump turned, swooping or climbing, drifting over the broad river which flashed silver in the sunlight.

It was in crossing the river that Prince Vlad realized something had changed in how Mugwump approached flying. When flying over warm land, thermal updrafts helped Mugwump maintain altitude. As he passed over the river, he’d descend. His descent, however, was a fraction of what it had been before and didn’t provoke a need to flap his wings. His wingspan had not grown significantly, so it had to be something else.

The dragon is using magick.

The thought came to Prince Vlad unbidden, and he tried to dismiss it as a hangover from his morning’s considerations. It presented him with two problems, neither of which he liked. The first was that there was magick that would allow heavier-than-air creatures to fly. While no man might be able to discover, master, or power the exact nature of that spell, the Prince found himself making a mental list of every story in the Good Book that involved angels or other people flying and levitating. Adding in every saint who had been said to have managed it swelled the list enormously. Vlad transformed that into a battalion of flying soldiers armed with rifles and didn’t like the implications at all. That the Church might know of that magick and might have incorporated it into their grimoire frightened him.

On top of that, the idea that a dragon could work magick caused all sorts of philosophical problems. Men spoke proudly about their ability to reason as being what differentiated them from beasts. Use of magick was but one example of the fruits of reasoning. Men used the ability to reason in conjunction with passages from the Good Book to justify the subjugation of every other creature in the world-as well as their fellow men.