Dragon Rose(32)

Almost as if I had summoned her with my thoughts, I heard the door in the outer room open and Melynne enter, calling, “Breakfast, my lady!”

At once I grasped the painting and dropped it down between the two blank canvases which had hidden it previously. My panic seemed foolish to me—after all, if Melynne did chance to spy the painting, I could always tell her it was of someone I had known in Lirinsholme, a cousin or something similarly harmless. But for whatever reason it felt vitally important to me that she not see it, and I did sigh in relief as I turned away from it just as she came in through the door.

She seemed not to notice anything amiss, but only set the tray down on the table next to the bed. By this time she knew better than to clear any space on my worktable for such things. “There’s more of that pear sauce you like, my lady, and wheat griddle cakes. I noticed you hadn’t been wanting your tea the past few mornings, but seeing as it’s turning brisk—”

Tea sounded like an excellent idea after the methlyn I had drunk the previous night. “That sounds wonderful, Melynne. I was thinking the dark green gown today.”

“Of course, my lady.” She bobbed a curtsey and went over to the wardrobe, then began to lay out my clothes for the day.

It didn’t matter to me all that much what I wore, as long as it was more or less suited for the day’s weather. However, by setting her to the task immediately, I gave myself a chance to eat my breakfast and drink my tea in silence, uninterrupted by any chatter. I liked Melynne, although it felt odd to be giving orders to someone only one or two years younger than myself, but that morning I found myself disinclined to conversation. My thoughts kept replaying that odd exchange with Theran the night before. I could have sworn he wanted to be closer to me, and yet he had run from me as if I were the dragon in human form, not he.

Although I hadn’t much luck with Sar in the past, she seemed the most likely candidate for questioning. Of course I couldn’t speak to my husband of such things, not when he had made it so clear that there were to be no real confidences between us. So I ate my food and treated my aching head with several cups of bracing tea, and vowed to go in search of Sar as soon as I was able.





I found her in the kitchen gardens, supervising the harvest of the last of the herbs against the onset of our first hard frosts. We had had a few light ones, ice crystals clinging to leaves and glittering like diamonds, only to melt almost as soon as the sun touched them, but the nights already grew colder, and the elms and oaks had begun to put on their autumn cloaks of red and gold and brown.

By some good luck the two kitchen maids assisting her had just finished plucking the last of the rosemary and thyme, and had gone scampering back indoors with their baskets of herbs to prepare them for drying. Sar watched them go and then turned, her eyebrows lifting slightly in surprise as she saw me standing there.

“My lady,” she said formally.

“Sar. I thought I might speak with you.”

“Of course, my lady,” was her automatic reply, but something in her manner turned guarded, as if she guessed I might guide the conversation in directions she did not particularly want to go.

“How long have you been here at Black’s Keep?”

She blinked at the question, although she replied readily enough. “Going on twenty-eight years now. I was younger than you when I first came.”

“And did you—that is, were you summoned here?” Somehow I had the impression that service to the Dragon Lord was not exactly voluntary.

“Good gods, no. I volunteered. That is, the steward at the time, Steen Larens, his name was, came to Greyton looking for a few likely lads and lasses. Even then I knew I didn’t much want to spend my life the way my mother had, bearing children until she—well, it didn’t much appeal to me.”

I’d heard certain less-than-savory things about Greyton, how the young women there were rather free with their virtues. Of course no one would say such things in front of me, but Lilianth had heard from her cousin who had it from her older brother that some of the young men of Lirinsholme would travel up the mountainside to amuse themselves, and how such things were brushed aside in the tiny hamlet.

“Otherwise, it would all be cousins marrying cousins, and the children would be born with crooked limbs…and worse,” she added, dropping her voice to truly sepulchral levels, as if to hint at defects best left to the imagination.

I saw no sign of any such a thing in Sar, but there could be any number of explanations for that. Looking into her level brown eyes, I knew better than to ask whether she and her siblings shared the same father, or whether she had decided it was better to serve the Dragon than to be thought a plaything for the young men of Lirinsholme.

“So you came to Black’s Keep…” I prompted.

“So I came here and worked in the kitchens, and Master Larens was pleased enough with me that when he felt he could no longer continue his duties, he put me in charge.”

“And he went back to Greyton?”

“Of course not. The Dragon takes care of his own. Master Larens had his rooms still, and when he passed he was laid to rest out there.” She gestured vaguely toward the northeast, to a stretch of forested land I had not yet explored.

The Dragon takes care of his own. Save, it seemed, his Brides, who had to be replenished every five years or so. “You know him well, then?”