dragon bard (beta)
Chapter nine: an unexpected guest
This is a work in progress, meant for newsletter subscribers only! Please keep the link private, and excuse any typos, etc--fully edited book to come fall 2021!
Kan sang the last notes, fingers hugging the fret board, skirling wind taking away the notes. The song was good—he was sure of that. But was it good enough? Since meeting the bard all his best songs just seemed… mediocre. Like there was still something he was missing. Something the bard just had.
Keep practicing, the man had said, strapping his lute case onto his mare the next morning. You’ll get there.
At the time, Kan had thought it was high praise, the result of proving himself with the bard’s lute the night before. Now, five days later, he was beginning to think it was the kind of bland nothing you might say to anyone. A good job, kid, or you’re doing great, versus focus on your countermelodies or even I remember writing songs like that. Just something to say because the kid in the settlement you’re passing through is obviously hopeless and desperate for praise.
Kantalo sighed, putting his lute down and gazing out at the ice. He was on a melt lake, one of the windswept stretches of ice a dragon melted as part of its hibernation period, sinking into the ice with its own heat and flattening the landscape around it. The sun was behind the rings in noonshadow, glittering through the seven celestial bands, and the wind was that kind of bitter cold you could only appreciate after too long in the still heat of a caldera’s walls. He and Galesea had spent the morning ranging, coming on two recent poach sites, but both had been left clean, or already scavenged.
He wanted to keep going, of course. He kept finding himself looking northwest—not toward Portown, though of course he’d loved to have gone instead of his mother. Toward Caldera Kasari, just a half day’s walk across the ice. Yelia’s caldera. He’d sent her a message through a passing breeder days ago, with no response. He was dying to go, but his mom had trusted him with the caldera, and a full day was too long to be away from the caldera, especially with Sleetbank’s new brood. The other dragons he half expected would stay even if the lull failed—he knew Galesea would—but losing Sleetbank and her hatchlings would be devastating. So, much as he was dying to trek over to Yelia, to bring her back under some pretense of visiting, and get the kind of privacy impossible in a normal caldera, he was stuck at home, alone.
Except for Galesea, of course. An ear-splitting shriek sounded from behind him, and a second later a dragon ripped through the air above his head, wind roaring around its wings, leaving a maelstrom of snow and ice behind. Kan smiled, long hair flying. At least she was having fun.
Galesea came down fifteen minutes or so later, when Kantalo had picked up his lute again. Keep practicing, the bard had said. Well, maybe there was something there.
“Have fun up there?” he asked, letting the song die and sliding one of his rings along Galesea’s tail, where she curled it next to him.
She huffed loudly, stamping one foot.
He chuckled. “Sure you don’t want to fly me over to Kasari? You could see Crystalscree.”
Galesea just cocked her head, glowing eyes regarding him. He said it again, clicking his ring on her scales, and she flared her neck this time, a clear no. He’d never been able to convince her to let him ride on her back—which he didn’t get at all, despite the fact that no one else had done it. She was more than strong enough, and it would they both got out more. She’d also never admitted she had any kind of special attraction to the cobalt-scaled Crystalscree, though it was obvious.
Galesea arched her neck toward the caldera, eyes still on him. He sighed. “Right. I’ll pack up.”
He wrapped his lute and hefted the small bag of scavenge they’d found—just a few serrated scales he’d admired, and some blood coagulate. No bones, not even buried ones—these poachers had hacked down into the ice to make sure they got it all. Times must be tough.
The caldera’s lull was still beating as they got in earshot, and part of him longed to just make sure it was wound and start the trek to Kasari. But Galesea flared her scales when he looked back that way, and he had promised his mother. Yelia would write back. There were still six days till his mom got back. Plenty of time for her to come over.
He was just getting Sleetbank settled for the night—her brood had swelled to five, and the hatchlings needed to be penned in or they’d destroy the place—when his ears caught an approaching lull. His heart caught. Visitors.
Yelia.
Kan was halfway up the stairs when he realized he probably looked like hell. He raced back down and ran a comb through his hair and swapped undercoats, wishing he’d left the house cleaner this morning. It would have to do.
He scrambled up the slope, already thinking of which songs he’d sing her, of the stories he’d tell her of the Bard, of what in Truth’s name he would do if they actually got a night together alone. Then he cleared the rim and his heart sank: not one visitor, but two. And while the one looked about the right height and gait for Yelia, the other could only be an older man. Kantalo squinted. Wearing the blue of a warden, unless he missed his mark. He didn’t recognize the dragon either, a narrow-hipped drake.
He frowned, hatchlings rolling in his stomach. What was Yelia doing with a warden, and no dragon of her own? Had she gotten into some trouble on the ice?
But no, as they drew closer, the smaller figure looked less and less like Yelia—black hair streamed from her hood, where Yelia’s was redgold, and her gait was less meandering, more straightforward, almost arrowlike.
Kantalo sighed. Not Yelia. Of course. The one time he had the caldera to himself, and Yelia couldn’t come.
Then the visitors got close enough to make out features, and he forgot about Yelia entirely. The girl was beautiful—shining, raven-black hair, shocking green eyes, and the kind of shapely cheeks that just begged to be caressed.
Kantalo shook himself. It was a good thing Yelia wasn’t here. He was staring.
Belatedly, he spread his arms in the goodwill gesture, and they repeated it back. “You are welcome within our walls,” he called down the slope of the caldera, “to share our meals and rhythms, and we welcome news of the wider world!”
“Ho settler!” the man called. “We ask shelter for a night, on our way east to Tumbaga, to settle the girl.”
“You are welcome,” Kan said, still working not to stare. “I am alone here, but there is plenty of room.”
The girl topped the rise, emerald eyes meeting his. “This is your caldera?” She spoke evenly, despite the steep climb.
Kantalo considered owning the lie for half a second, but there would be no hiding his mother’s presence. “My family’s,” he said. “They are—gone, to Portown.” Somehow it seemed better to say they than my mom. Less like he was still a kid.
The warden nodded, unhitching a sled from their drake. “I am Labot Oakscarol, of her Majesty’s Eleventh Regiment of Arctic Wardens, and this is—”
“—Rena,” the girl cut in. “Rena Jettysroar, formerly of Daungan. I’ve come to make my life on the ice.”
“Kantalo Windsdirge,” he said, offering a hand to the man and an arm to the girl, as his mother had taught him. “You are—young, to come settling, alone.”
“The Blackness took my family,” she said quietly. “Can we come in? It’s so bitterly cold out here.”
“Of course! Truths, what am I thinking?” He led them in and got their drake settled, Galesea watching half-lidded from her place next to the garden beds.
“You—don’t pen that one?” the warden asked, eying the jade-patinaed dragon mistrustfully.
Kan smiled. “Nah. She likes to wander, at night.” The man blanched. “She’s safe, though, don’t worry! She wouldn’t hurt a soul.”
Rena eyed him sharply at that, but she didn’t seem to be afraid like the warden. More… considering. He smiled. “Do you want to meet her?”
“No thanks,” she said. “What I want is to strip off these furs and take a proper bath.”
Kan barely kept the color from his cheeks.
They dined over carrot and leek stew, Rena wearing only a thin cotton top, her hair hanging in wet strands. Everything about her was exotic: the cut of her clothing, the lilt to her speech, even the coloring to her cheeks, like she’d stepped from the Old World just this morning.
“So,” Kantalo said, needing something to distract him from the sight of a girl without her furs. Anything. “Have you been long on the road?”
“Six weeks for me,” the warden said, holding his bowl in two hands. “Tracking a group of poachers out of Westagen. Met Rena here about a week ago.”
“Trying to make it work in Dumura settlement,” she said, grimacing at her porridge. “You heard of it?”
Kantalo nodded. “Northwest of here. Close to the water, isn’t it?” He’d actually seen it once, with Yelia, but he wasn’t about to say that. For some reason.
“Could have been. Seemed a million miles away from anything, as far as I could tell.”
“Why’d you pick it then?”
“Heard they had some new way of harnessing their dragons, using their fire.”
Kantalo stared. “Really? They got their dragons to heat?” It was the holy grail of every trainer on the ice—if they could harness dragon’s fire, suddenly iron got easier to smelt, settlements easier to build, iceways easier to maintain--
“Nah. Turns out it was just some kid, lying to me in Portown to try to get in my pants.”
Kantalo choked on his porridge. Were all old world girls like this? “That’s, ah, too bad.”
She shrugged. “It was worth it. Ever heard of anyone pulling it off?”
He suddenly desperately wished he’d been practicing that with Galesea, instead of trying to learn to fly. “No. I—might be able to get Galesea to do it, though. She’s not a normal dragon.”
“Galesea?” Rena and the warden asked on top of each other.
“My dragon,” Kantalo said, hating the blush that crept into his cheeks. “I—name them.”
Still, Rena didn’t seem to think that was stupid, the way even Yelia did. She pursed her lips, thin and delicately pink. “I’d be interested to see that.”
The warden cleared his throat. “We—really need to move on, in the morning. The band was through here just a few days ago, if those carcasses are any evidence. I can’t let them fall behind.”
“You could stay here,” Kantalo said, before he’d had a second to think about it. More blush started welling up his neck, like a gout of fresh magma. “I mean—to test it. If you’re interested. In that kind of thing. Dragons.”
Rena smiled. Some non-flustered and embarrassed part of him thought she probably got reactions like this a lot. Maybe liked it, even. “Well,” she said. “Maybe there’d be time to try in the morning. And I am interested. That’s the whole reason I came here. There’s so much potential to these beasts—they’re massive, they fly, they breathe fire—and all we do is harness them up like winter-proof oxen.”
“I couldn’t agree more,” Kantalo said, catching a disapproving gaze from the warden.
They finished the meal, talk moving to other topics—the poachers they were tracking, and whether Kantalo had seen them; the bitterness of foods with dragon’s blood and how look it took to get used to it; the latest news from the old world. Kan wanted to bring up the rebel congress in Portown, but they’d both left before it happened, and the warden seemed to disapprove of him enough without talk of rebellion. Kantalo brewed cinnamon tea and poured it out for them, then screwed up his courage and asked if they’d like to hear a few songs. “For the continental crown,” he explained. “I’m thinking of competing.”
The warden set his mug down with a clink. “Been a long day for me, son. Think I’ll turn in. Rena?”
Kantalo glanced between them, heart lurching. Had he missed something? He’d prepared separate rooms.
Rena pursed her lips. “I probably should too. But show me what your dragon can do in the morning, okay?” She leaned over, pressing a hand to his arm. “I’ll be looking forward to it.”
Kantalo just nodded, a sudden lump in his throat. He sat there a long time after they’d gone to their rooms—their separate rooms, thank Kalai—staring after them. Galesea snorted along the far wall.
“Aw, come on then,” he said, pulling back the heat flap so she could push out the hanging scale curtain. “You’ve gotta admit, she’s not like the girls around here.”
Galesea huffed, brushing a warm flank against him as she passed.
“No, but in a good way. She actually cares about dragon stuff! Shouldn’t you like that? Don’t you want to see more people figure out you’re more than an ox, or whatever she said?”
Galesea sauntered to her favorite spot, flaring the scales along her crest in a series of clinks.
“Complicated? I don’t think it’s complicated at all. You’re just jealous, maybe.”
She gave him a flat gaze that needed no interpretation.
Keep practicing, the man had said, strapping his lute case onto his mare the next morning. You’ll get there.
At the time, Kan had thought it was high praise, the result of proving himself with the bard’s lute the night before. Now, five days later, he was beginning to think it was the kind of bland nothing you might say to anyone. A good job, kid, or you’re doing great, versus focus on your countermelodies or even I remember writing songs like that. Just something to say because the kid in the settlement you’re passing through is obviously hopeless and desperate for praise.
Kantalo sighed, putting his lute down and gazing out at the ice. He was on a melt lake, one of the windswept stretches of ice a dragon melted as part of its hibernation period, sinking into the ice with its own heat and flattening the landscape around it. The sun was behind the rings in noonshadow, glittering through the seven celestial bands, and the wind was that kind of bitter cold you could only appreciate after too long in the still heat of a caldera’s walls. He and Galesea had spent the morning ranging, coming on two recent poach sites, but both had been left clean, or already scavenged.
He wanted to keep going, of course. He kept finding himself looking northwest—not toward Portown, though of course he’d loved to have gone instead of his mother. Toward Caldera Kasari, just a half day’s walk across the ice. Yelia’s caldera. He’d sent her a message through a passing breeder days ago, with no response. He was dying to go, but his mom had trusted him with the caldera, and a full day was too long to be away from the caldera, especially with Sleetbank’s new brood. The other dragons he half expected would stay even if the lull failed—he knew Galesea would—but losing Sleetbank and her hatchlings would be devastating. So, much as he was dying to trek over to Yelia, to bring her back under some pretense of visiting, and get the kind of privacy impossible in a normal caldera, he was stuck at home, alone.
Except for Galesea, of course. An ear-splitting shriek sounded from behind him, and a second later a dragon ripped through the air above his head, wind roaring around its wings, leaving a maelstrom of snow and ice behind. Kan smiled, long hair flying. At least she was having fun.
Galesea came down fifteen minutes or so later, when Kantalo had picked up his lute again. Keep practicing, the bard had said. Well, maybe there was something there.
“Have fun up there?” he asked, letting the song die and sliding one of his rings along Galesea’s tail, where she curled it next to him.
She huffed loudly, stamping one foot.
He chuckled. “Sure you don’t want to fly me over to Kasari? You could see Crystalscree.”
Galesea just cocked her head, glowing eyes regarding him. He said it again, clicking his ring on her scales, and she flared her neck this time, a clear no. He’d never been able to convince her to let him ride on her back—which he didn’t get at all, despite the fact that no one else had done it. She was more than strong enough, and it would they both got out more. She’d also never admitted she had any kind of special attraction to the cobalt-scaled Crystalscree, though it was obvious.
Galesea arched her neck toward the caldera, eyes still on him. He sighed. “Right. I’ll pack up.”
He wrapped his lute and hefted the small bag of scavenge they’d found—just a few serrated scales he’d admired, and some blood coagulate. No bones, not even buried ones—these poachers had hacked down into the ice to make sure they got it all. Times must be tough.
The caldera’s lull was still beating as they got in earshot, and part of him longed to just make sure it was wound and start the trek to Kasari. But Galesea flared her scales when he looked back that way, and he had promised his mother. Yelia would write back. There were still six days till his mom got back. Plenty of time for her to come over.
He was just getting Sleetbank settled for the night—her brood had swelled to five, and the hatchlings needed to be penned in or they’d destroy the place—when his ears caught an approaching lull. His heart caught. Visitors.
Yelia.
Kan was halfway up the stairs when he realized he probably looked like hell. He raced back down and ran a comb through his hair and swapped undercoats, wishing he’d left the house cleaner this morning. It would have to do.
He scrambled up the slope, already thinking of which songs he’d sing her, of the stories he’d tell her of the Bard, of what in Truth’s name he would do if they actually got a night together alone. Then he cleared the rim and his heart sank: not one visitor, but two. And while the one looked about the right height and gait for Yelia, the other could only be an older man. Kantalo squinted. Wearing the blue of a warden, unless he missed his mark. He didn’t recognize the dragon either, a narrow-hipped drake.
He frowned, hatchlings rolling in his stomach. What was Yelia doing with a warden, and no dragon of her own? Had she gotten into some trouble on the ice?
But no, as they drew closer, the smaller figure looked less and less like Yelia—black hair streamed from her hood, where Yelia’s was redgold, and her gait was less meandering, more straightforward, almost arrowlike.
Kantalo sighed. Not Yelia. Of course. The one time he had the caldera to himself, and Yelia couldn’t come.
Then the visitors got close enough to make out features, and he forgot about Yelia entirely. The girl was beautiful—shining, raven-black hair, shocking green eyes, and the kind of shapely cheeks that just begged to be caressed.
Kantalo shook himself. It was a good thing Yelia wasn’t here. He was staring.
Belatedly, he spread his arms in the goodwill gesture, and they repeated it back. “You are welcome within our walls,” he called down the slope of the caldera, “to share our meals and rhythms, and we welcome news of the wider world!”
“Ho settler!” the man called. “We ask shelter for a night, on our way east to Tumbaga, to settle the girl.”
“You are welcome,” Kan said, still working not to stare. “I am alone here, but there is plenty of room.”
The girl topped the rise, emerald eyes meeting his. “This is your caldera?” She spoke evenly, despite the steep climb.
Kantalo considered owning the lie for half a second, but there would be no hiding his mother’s presence. “My family’s,” he said. “They are—gone, to Portown.” Somehow it seemed better to say they than my mom. Less like he was still a kid.
The warden nodded, unhitching a sled from their drake. “I am Labot Oakscarol, of her Majesty’s Eleventh Regiment of Arctic Wardens, and this is—”
“—Rena,” the girl cut in. “Rena Jettysroar, formerly of Daungan. I’ve come to make my life on the ice.”
“Kantalo Windsdirge,” he said, offering a hand to the man and an arm to the girl, as his mother had taught him. “You are—young, to come settling, alone.”
“The Blackness took my family,” she said quietly. “Can we come in? It’s so bitterly cold out here.”
“Of course! Truths, what am I thinking?” He led them in and got their drake settled, Galesea watching half-lidded from her place next to the garden beds.
“You—don’t pen that one?” the warden asked, eying the jade-patinaed dragon mistrustfully.
Kan smiled. “Nah. She likes to wander, at night.” The man blanched. “She’s safe, though, don’t worry! She wouldn’t hurt a soul.”
Rena eyed him sharply at that, but she didn’t seem to be afraid like the warden. More… considering. He smiled. “Do you want to meet her?”
“No thanks,” she said. “What I want is to strip off these furs and take a proper bath.”
Kan barely kept the color from his cheeks.
They dined over carrot and leek stew, Rena wearing only a thin cotton top, her hair hanging in wet strands. Everything about her was exotic: the cut of her clothing, the lilt to her speech, even the coloring to her cheeks, like she’d stepped from the Old World just this morning.
“So,” Kantalo said, needing something to distract him from the sight of a girl without her furs. Anything. “Have you been long on the road?”
“Six weeks for me,” the warden said, holding his bowl in two hands. “Tracking a group of poachers out of Westagen. Met Rena here about a week ago.”
“Trying to make it work in Dumura settlement,” she said, grimacing at her porridge. “You heard of it?”
Kantalo nodded. “Northwest of here. Close to the water, isn’t it?” He’d actually seen it once, with Yelia, but he wasn’t about to say that. For some reason.
“Could have been. Seemed a million miles away from anything, as far as I could tell.”
“Why’d you pick it then?”
“Heard they had some new way of harnessing their dragons, using their fire.”
Kantalo stared. “Really? They got their dragons to heat?” It was the holy grail of every trainer on the ice—if they could harness dragon’s fire, suddenly iron got easier to smelt, settlements easier to build, iceways easier to maintain--
“Nah. Turns out it was just some kid, lying to me in Portown to try to get in my pants.”
Kantalo choked on his porridge. Were all old world girls like this? “That’s, ah, too bad.”
She shrugged. “It was worth it. Ever heard of anyone pulling it off?”
He suddenly desperately wished he’d been practicing that with Galesea, instead of trying to learn to fly. “No. I—might be able to get Galesea to do it, though. She’s not a normal dragon.”
“Galesea?” Rena and the warden asked on top of each other.
“My dragon,” Kantalo said, hating the blush that crept into his cheeks. “I—name them.”
Still, Rena didn’t seem to think that was stupid, the way even Yelia did. She pursed her lips, thin and delicately pink. “I’d be interested to see that.”
The warden cleared his throat. “We—really need to move on, in the morning. The band was through here just a few days ago, if those carcasses are any evidence. I can’t let them fall behind.”
“You could stay here,” Kantalo said, before he’d had a second to think about it. More blush started welling up his neck, like a gout of fresh magma. “I mean—to test it. If you’re interested. In that kind of thing. Dragons.”
Rena smiled. Some non-flustered and embarrassed part of him thought she probably got reactions like this a lot. Maybe liked it, even. “Well,” she said. “Maybe there’d be time to try in the morning. And I am interested. That’s the whole reason I came here. There’s so much potential to these beasts—they’re massive, they fly, they breathe fire—and all we do is harness them up like winter-proof oxen.”
“I couldn’t agree more,” Kantalo said, catching a disapproving gaze from the warden.
They finished the meal, talk moving to other topics—the poachers they were tracking, and whether Kantalo had seen them; the bitterness of foods with dragon’s blood and how look it took to get used to it; the latest news from the old world. Kan wanted to bring up the rebel congress in Portown, but they’d both left before it happened, and the warden seemed to disapprove of him enough without talk of rebellion. Kantalo brewed cinnamon tea and poured it out for them, then screwed up his courage and asked if they’d like to hear a few songs. “For the continental crown,” he explained. “I’m thinking of competing.”
The warden set his mug down with a clink. “Been a long day for me, son. Think I’ll turn in. Rena?”
Kantalo glanced between them, heart lurching. Had he missed something? He’d prepared separate rooms.
Rena pursed her lips. “I probably should too. But show me what your dragon can do in the morning, okay?” She leaned over, pressing a hand to his arm. “I’ll be looking forward to it.”
Kantalo just nodded, a sudden lump in his throat. He sat there a long time after they’d gone to their rooms—their separate rooms, thank Kalai—staring after them. Galesea snorted along the far wall.
“Aw, come on then,” he said, pulling back the heat flap so she could push out the hanging scale curtain. “You’ve gotta admit, she’s not like the girls around here.”
Galesea huffed, brushing a warm flank against him as she passed.
“No, but in a good way. She actually cares about dragon stuff! Shouldn’t you like that? Don’t you want to see more people figure out you’re more than an ox, or whatever she said?”
Galesea sauntered to her favorite spot, flaring the scales along her crest in a series of clinks.
“Complicated? I don’t think it’s complicated at all. You’re just jealous, maybe.”
She gave him a flat gaze that needed no interpretation.
