‘Stay completely still.’ Without asking he rips two wide strips of fabric from the bottom of my dress and wraps them around his hands. Then he starts running his fingers down my injured leg, carefully avoiding the exposed flesh of my ankle; he takes me for one of the flightless, who would be damaged by his touch. Blood burns beneath my skin.
‘Stop it.’
He ignores my request. ‘Can you move your foot?’
‘A little. And I order you to stop touching me.’
‘Order me?’ There is a definite edge to his voice.
I straighten up as much as I can, given my aching muscles. ‘I am the Protector of Atratys, and you’re on my land.’
‘You’re the Protector?’ He sits back on his heels, looking me slowly up and down. ‘A Protector who is completely unattended? Who wears homespun and gloves like a servant?’ He laughs – his face softens, for a moment – and shakes his head. ‘If you’re the Protector of Atratys, I’m a princess. Perhaps you’re a liar, or perhaps you’re concussed. Either way, you need to move from here: the tide is coming in. Be careful not to touch me.’
Ignoring my protests, he slides his arms beneath me, holding me out away from his chest as if I weigh no more than a bundle of feathers, and carries me up onto the tumbled boulders at the edge of the beach. From here I can see the castle, red-walled in the afternoon sun. Part of me wants to keep arguing with him, but I’m starting to feel sick, I’ve got sand in my hair and inside my clothes and somewhere along the way I’ve managed to lose a shoe. I really just need him to go away so I can cry in peace.
The boy is watching me. ‘I’ll send someone down from the castle to make sure you get home. You’re welcome, by the way.’ He gestures to the carcass of the rock dragon.
I can’t repress a shudder. ‘Thank you, Master Crow.’
‘I’m not a crow. I’m a raven.’ He grunts and pushes his hair out of his eyes. ‘I’d like to know who managed to chain up a rock dragon. And why. And where it came from – they don’t even breed around here.’ Perhaps he takes my silence for fear, because he adds, ‘Don’t worry: you’re not in trouble. No one is going to blame a child.’
A child? I open my mouth to reply, but he has already turned away and is climbing the path towards the top of the cliffs.
My tears have dried by the time Letya returns down the same path with servants and a doctor, but she stops short when she sees me and puts her hands on her hips. ‘You were supposed to stay still! Look at the state of you. And bleeding too.’ She gestures to the side of my head, then spots the dead dragon. Her eyes widen. ‘What in the Firebird’s name …?’
‘I’ll explain later.’ I put my fingertips to my head; sure enough, my earlobe is tacky with congealing blood. ‘Just remember you’re my friend, not my nursemaid. Or my bodyguard.’
Letya shoots me a long look. ‘I’m your paid companion. The lord steward pays me to keep you company and to wait on you. I have certain … responsibilities.’
‘So, you wouldn’t – Ouch!’
The doctor stops prodding my leg. ‘You’ve sprained your ankle, Your Grace. Quite badly, I’m afraid.’ She gestures to two servants, who are waiting nearby with a sedan chair.
Once I’m settled I turn back to Letya. ‘Do you think I look like a child?’
‘What?’ She frowns, confused. ‘Of course not. Though …’
I raise my eyebrows, waiting.
‘I suppose you do look quite young, dressed in those clothes. And covered in dirt. Why?’
‘No reason. Would you really not come riding with me if Lord Lancelin didn’t pay you?’
My paid companion crosses her arms and tilts her head. ‘Well, I probably would. I’ve grown quite fond of you over the last five years. Besides, there’s a certain entertainment to be gained from watching you risk your neck on an almost weekly basis.’
I’ve never talked to Letya about why I have to take such risks, but I suspect she understands. ‘I love you too, Letya. I’ll love you even more if we can keep this a secret from Lord Lancelin.’
She chuckles, a little reluctantly. ‘He won’t hear of it from me.’ But her gaze returns to the dragon carcass. ‘Did you kill it? Or did someone –’
‘It died. It was old, I suppose.’ A wave of nausea makes my head spin; I sink back into the cushions behind me, glad of an excuse to end the conversation. I don’t want to talk about the raven boy. I don’t want to think about his identity, or whether I’m ever going to see him again.
Please let him not be who I think he might be. Please …
Two
For the next three days I keep to my rooms, doing as the physician orders, nursing my bruised ribs and swollen ankle. I do not tell Lord Lancelin what happened, and he does not ask me about it. I wonder if he’s trying to make a point: at the Silver Citadel I won’t have the freedom to go where I like or wear what I like. Left in peace, I spend some of my time working through the various letters and petitions that Lancelin gives me. But every time my attention wavers I am back on the beach, watching the rock dragon, wondering where it came from and who could have wanted or needed to fasten an iron collar around its neck. How, indeed, such a thing was even possible. I turn the problem over and over until my head aches.
The dark-haired raven boy unsettles my dreams.
By the fourth day, the thought of remaining in my apartment for one moment longer makes me want to scream. After breakfast I get dressed, bully my doctor into giving me a crutch and limp off towards the library. Not to read – it’s a cold, hard-edged room, furnished more for display than comfort – but to consult the chronicler, who is usually at work there. I want to find out if there have been any other reports of rock dragons in the dominion, and I need a more reliable source than my maid’s cousin’s friend. But as I reach the library entrance I hear voices through the half-open door. Not the chronicler: Lord Lancelin, and someone else. Someone angry.
‘You had no right. Without consulting me, without even considering what I might wish, to make such a promise on my behalf –’
‘And why should I not?’ Lord Lancelin’s tone, in contrast, is calm and measured. ‘Do you not owe Her Grace your allegiance? To say nothing of your duty to me.’
‘But it’s not fair! You may have been content to waste your life in the shadow of the late Protector’s wing, but I have other plans. I want to see more of the world – the world outside of Solanum. And there are so many improvements we could make to our own estate, if you ever spent any time there.’
My heart sinks – I know that voice. Even from here, I can tell that he is gritting his teeth. And pacing: footsteps ring on the marble floor. I force myself to lean forward, to peep through the crack between the door and the frame, and have to bite my lip to stop myself from swearing.
It’s him. The young noble from the beach. The raven boy. Properly dressed now of course, in a red velvet tunic, dark leather trousers and knee-length boots. His hair is sticking up in tufts as if he’s been dragging his fingers through it. And he’s scowling. ‘And what shall I say to Mother? After you’ve neglected her for so many years, that I am to be sent away again? To serve a Protector who is barely worthy of the name? And now you tell me that the idiot girl won’t even travel as a swan, that we have to go by coach like a couple of flightless commoners –’