Dragon Flight

A Basin of Water


There are three truths I have come to learn in the year since the Dragon War. The first is that both humans and dragons have the capacity to be good or evil. The second is that even if you’re doing something you love, you can still become bored with your work. And the third truth is that my business partner, Marta, will never be finished with her wedding gown.

Either one of them.

“It’s so white,” Marta complained for the thousandth time.

I tried to put my head in my hands, and nearly poked myself in the eye with a needle. I jerked back just in time, and glared at the needle. “Marta,” I said.

“Yes?”

I had no idea what else to say, so I shook my head instead. My gaze fell on some blue fabric that lay on the cutting table in front of me. “Your gown for the Moralienin ceremony isn’t white,” I offered. Of course, we had had this conversation so many times that I knew exactly what was coming next.

“But that’s a set pattern,” she said, as she always did. “No room for us to experiment, to really make it special.” She flapped her hands in agitation. “And I have to sew every stitch myself, it’s tradition.”

I put my needle down and ground the heels of my palms into my eyes. “Maaarta,” I wailed.

“Oh, I’m sorry, does this bore you?” She threw a spool of thread at me. “Just because it’s my wedding, and not yours!”

That hurt, but I didn’t let it show on my face. I knew that Marta hadn’t meant it to be unkind. I had never confided my fears to her – that I would end up a lonely spinster, running the dress shop by myself after she was long wed. After all, I had had the audacity to fall in love with a prince, and princes do not marry shopkeepers.

“Don’t worry, Creel, you’ll be married soon enough.” Alle, our assistant, came in with a bolt of cloth in her arms and a mischievous twinkle in her eye. I was sure she knew exactly what we had been talking about.

“No, I won’t,” I protested.

“You get more letters from Prince Luka than his father does,” Alle said, unintentionally causing me another pang. “And he’s supposed to be passing along information to the king about Citatie.”

“Where is Citatie, anyway?” I asked in an attempt to change the subject.

I really did want to know about Citatie: I had never dared to tell Luka that I had no clue where he was. All I knew was that it was very hot there, and that their king was very odd. Although Luka and I were just friends – how could we be anything more than that? – I hated to look foolish in front of him. The schoolmistress in Carlieff Town, where I grew up, had been a bit vague about the geography outside Feravel’s borders.

“It’s to the south, across an ocean,” Marta said, sounding just as vague as my old teacher.

Alle shrugged. It seemed that we had all had the same level of schooling. I sighed.

“If you’ve finished fussing over Marta’s gowns, which needn’t be ready for four more months,” Alle said, “I believe that it’s time to open the shop. The invitations to the crown prince’s wedding were sent out two days ago; there should be quite a few wealthies wanting new gowns for the feasts and the ceremony.”

“And that’s another thing,” Marta said as we took off our work aprons and straightened our hair in the mirror on the wall. “We’re making the clothes for the royal bride-to-be, we’re friends with both princes, yet where’s our invitation to the wedding?”

“Marta,” I said, even though secretly I was a little hurt by this as well as by their teasing, “we’re commoners.”

“Be that as it may,” she said severely, “you’re still the Heroine of the Dragon –”

I whirled around. “Don’t say it,” I told her. “Don’t even think it. I own a dress shop and girls from small northern towns who own dress shops do not go to royal weddings. I’m not some mythical warrior woman.”

That was what I told myself every day. King Caxel had once offered to have me marry Miles, as a reward for my part in the Dragon War, and I had refused. I truly had no desire to be a queen or a princess, but it still pained me that in refusing Miles I had cemented my status as a common merchant with no chance of becoming one of Marta’s wealthies, who had the right to dance with princes.

Or to marry them.

Her eyes filled with sympathy as though guessing at my roiling emotions. We opened up the shop in silence.

My hurt deepened as the day wore on and just as Alle had predicted, customers poured in to demand gowns for the royal wedding. It seemed that everyone with the least title, the least bit of wealth, had been invited. But I know Crown Prince Milun, I cried out inside. Marta and I were among perhaps a dozen people who had permission to call him Miles. And yes, Luka and I could never be more, but we were friends, after all.