House of Shadows(61)

“Birds had been with us all the time, flying after the ship and perching on the ropes: That kind with the long white wings, and the small kind that darts in and out of the waves as though it were half fish and only half bird. But there were no birds with us that morning. I think they saw it far below, a shadow in the blue, and it frightened them because it was so much greater than they.”

She was a natural storyteller, Taudde thought. There was music in the cadences of her voice. Despite everything, he found himself genuinely interested in her story. Bluefountain had begun playing an accompaniment, picking up the rhythm of the girl’s voice with her kinsana and adding a dark burring underneath that rhythm, as though something great swam below Moonflower’s words.

“Fish came before it, leaping on the surface of the water. The light turned them to silver and pearl as they leaped. There were hundreds of fish, thousands maybe, so many the whole sea seemed alive with them. If someone had leaped over the railing, I think he would have been able to walk on their backs as though on cobbles.

“I remember the captain shouting to us to get away from the railing. At the time, I did not hear him. I was looking at the dragon. My father and my older sisters were busy with the little girls, and Nemienne, who would have given her toes for a chance to see a dragon, was below in our cabin. So there was no one by the railing but me when the dragon came up out of the sea.

“It might have been made by a Paliante jeweler.” The girl’s voice dropped even lower, taking on a dreamier cadence. “Its scales were enameled in jet and citrine. Its ivory tusks looked like crescent moons, and its horns were jet spiraled around with gold. It seemed to rise up as high as Kerre Maraddras. Its head seemed the size of the Laodd, its eyes larger than whole oxen. They were sapphire traced with nets of gold, and they had slit pupils like a cat’s.

“I thought it would fall down on the ship and crush it, as an avalanche will crush a cart, and with no more malice. It seemed to me a force of the sea, like the wind and the waves. But then it dipped its head to the railing and turned to look across the deck with one sapphire eye, and I saw it knew we were a ship and not really a thing of the sea, and that it was curious. By then I knew that I should back away, only it was too late. And it was so beautiful. It was near enough I could reach out my hand and touch it. So I did. It was cool, but not cold, and not slippery as a fish is slippery. Touching it was like touching glass.

“Then it lifted its head again and went down into the sea, and the water closed over it, and it was gone. And I cried,” the girl finished simply. “My father thought it was because I had been afraid, but really I cried because it had been so beautiful.”

There was a brief, awed pause. Bluefountain drew her accompaniment to a conclusion, letting the burr underlying the melody sink down and disappear, like something great slipping slowly from sight. She did not lay a hand across the strings to still them, but let the last notes ease imperceptibly down into silence.

Then Koriadde, without a word, picked up his arm ring and tossed it to the table before Moonflower. It nearly slid off the edge, so the girl had to put a hand out to steady it. She looked at Koriadde in surprise, and Taudde knew she had not expected to win any prize for her story—that she had not been thinking at all of the terms the young man had proposed for the game.

Ankennes gave the young keiso his ring, murmuring, “Beautifully told, child.” Jeres Geliadde gave her his thumb ring of plain polished hematite, and Rue leaned over and murmured to Moonflower that this ring meant she could request aid from any of the King’s Own guardsmen. Moonflower looked suitably impressed. Taudde observed the glance the prince and his bodyguard exchanged, and the resigned nod Jeres Geliadde gave the prince, and the prince’s small smile, but he thought Moonflower missed this exchange.

The prince’s friend, Jerinte, presented Moonflower with a more costly ring, gold and set with an expensive black opal, though presumably this one came without valuable attachments. Taudde had guessed this would be a rich party where every gift given would be expensive. Now he saw he had reason to be grateful he’d prepared for it. He gave the girl one of his own rings: silver wire woven to encage a single fine pearl.

Miennes’s smile held an element of smugness, no doubt because he could well afford this game of generosity. He gave the girl an earring that held a sapphire precisely the color of her eyes and was certainly worth more than all the other rings together. Jerinte glanced at the older man with dislike, but Koriadde only looked amused.

Moonflower stared at these gifts and blushed.