‘As are we all,’ Queen Etta announced icily. ‘Especially since you have not yet shared with me the reason for this … visit.’ There was no mistaking her displeasure. But just as unnerving to me was how Kennitsson was staring at Heeby. He suddenly stepped down, past the startled guard and even past Rapskal, and walked directly toward her.
My breath caught in my throat. The dragon was hungry and he was a stranger. But she only twisted her head at him and regarded him with gently whirling eyes.
‘Bring this wondrous dragon a tub of water!’ he commanded suddenly. ‘She is parched with thirst! No creature so glorious should suffer such privation! And where are the goats? Should not they be here by now? Bring her one of the brown bullocks as well! She is famished!’ And the idiot approached the hungry dragon, his hand outstretched.
A murmur of dismay and consternation rose from the gathered crowd. Etta’s mouth hung slightly ajar in breathless fear.
‘No!’ Wintrow cried, starting forward. I expected Rapskal to leap forward to save the prince. But although the Elderling was in motion, he was coming across the green toward me. I noticed Sorcor moving swiftly and too late to shadow Kennitsson’s movement. Heeby would eat the prince.
But Heeby only extended her head until her scaled snout touched Kennitsson’s hand. My breath eased out of me. I wondered if Kennitsson’s display had been true bravery or if he had fallen prey to the dragon’s glamor.
He lifted his other hand and set it to her face. ‘Lovely one!’ the prince said, and the dragon lowered her head to allow him to scratch her brow.
A sigh, a murmur of approval from the gathered throng, told me what I had not guessed before: the people of the Pirate Isles adored their prince. I might have seen him as spoiled man-boy, but his flair of elegance and this show of bravado dazzled the crowd. As the goats came blatting around the corner of the manor house, Heeby lifted her head and looked over her shoulder at them.
‘Go!’ the prince bade her. ‘Satisfy your hunger, you beauteous thing!’ He stood fearlessly as she spun and leapt. For the second time that day, I watched a dragon make a kill and listened to a roar of approval from the crowd.
‘Ware!’ Lant muttered, stepping up beside me, and Per quickly moved to my other flank as Rapskal approached, his hand extended to clasp wrists with me. A wide smile of white teeth looked peculiar in his scarlet-scaled face. I met his hand, but he did not release it after our clasp. Instead he tugged at me as if I had forgotten my manners. ‘Don’t stand there, FitzChivalry! I must present myself to their queen.’ He lifted his voice to cry, ‘Enjoy your meal, Heeby, my glorious one! Prince, thank you for such a kind greeting! Now that my dragon is well tended, I shall convey to FitzChivalry all that he must know.’
He took my arm and I let him. We advanced together across the dragon-torn turf, Lant and Per close behind us. A bullock bellowed in alarm and I turned to see the poor panicked creature being dragged and chivvied toward the dragon.
‘Release it!’ Kennitsson bellowed, and they did. The cattle-boys barely evaded the dragon’s charge as bullock and predator savaged another half-acre of garden. This bullock was a fighter and his horns had not been removed. He made several attempts to gore Heeby. She sprang into the air and came down on him with all four feet, a cat pouncing on a mouse. His bellow ended in a terrible wet crunch. Per made a sound of dismay but the mob shouted with piratical amusement. Rapskal could not have planned a better entertainment for them than bull-baiting in the queen’s garden. The prince lifted his arms wide overhead in triumph and shouted, ‘Fear her not, my people! This scarlet beauty has come in friendship!’
The crowd’s resounding approval was deafening.
Queen Etta and her party had retreated slightly from the steps, but Wintrow had remained on the portico and was gesturing to us to join them. Rapskal and I reached the wide white steps and ascended them to where Queen Etta stood transfixed by her son’s spectacle. I heard her whisper softly, ‘He has his father’s gift for winning hearts. This is good.’
We climbed more steps to where a stiffly smiling Wintrow posed. Amber and Spark awaited us there, faces frozen in uncertainty.
‘What is this about?’ he demanded in a low voice while greeting me in apparently affable fashion. ‘What chaos have you brought to our doorstep, FitzChivalry? A mad ship, stealing our prince for your mission of vengeance and now dragons on our green?’
