“If not years,” Rory said, lowering the oars. “Can I get in the boat now, or is that dragon-stinking man going to poke me with the iron stick?”
I poked him. “Rory, don’t be impolite! Maester Napata, my apologies. What will you do now?”
Kemal gestured toward the building. “I inherit the position as headmaster. That was always His Excellency’s intention.”
A shape like the void of night thumped down to the shore. I felt as with the skin of the grass that crushing weight, the ancient fire of its soul, and the spark of a new being about to shed the husk of its old form.
Bee’s flow of words was the leash on which she led the beast to water. “I do not mean to sound inconsiderate or ungrateful, but I do think it most unfair that I should risk so much and yet be told so little. I realize human people are of little interest to your kind except insofar as we hinder your lives or aid you. But, for example, I would wish to know who that very old man was who kissed me and then died! Was he one of your kind, for I am sure he must have been. Why did he say he was waiting for me? He called me his death!”
Because of the cloudy light chasing along its black scales, she was able to see us standing by the pier. She waved cheerfully, looking not one bit frightened.
The dragon slid into the river. The touch of the water peeled away the skin of the beast. As his old skin sloughed off, a slender creature with pearlescent scales unfolded sleek wings. Its crest fluttered in a rainbow of shining color. It looked very like the leviathan that had carried us across the Great Smoke, only much smaller. The water boiled white as she swam in a wide arc out into the current and back to the shore.
Stars peeked through rents in the cloud cover. The head breached. Water poured off the long neck as she towered above us. Her scales reflected us as in a mirror:
The shadow of Rory’s cat spirit limned his body like a cloak.
The glittering threads of Vai’s cold magic flowed like sparkling ribbons that were being sucked into the void of the dragon’s massive weight.
Maestra Lian and Bee each bore the ghost of a third eye shutting and opening on her forehead.
As for me… two Cats melted together, one wreathed in the shadowy threads of magic that bind the worlds while the other was plain, solid flesh.
Bee turned to Kemal. Unfolding around him in the manner of a male peacock’s bright tail, he wore a fan of brilliant colors shaped into the translucent illusion of the dragon that was his true nature. I thought it unlikely he could have looked away from Bee’s smitten regard even if the world had ended and we had all been swallowed by fire and ice.
Her voice’s hoarse tremor was no doubt enrapturing to a man who had been hopelessly infatuated for so long. “I have never seen anything as magnificent in my life as you becoming a dragon.”
She tipped up her face.
I thought he would crush her to him and kiss her searchingly and deeply and with the release of all that frustrated longing, as Vai had kissed me so angrily and passionately on the stairs at Nance’s boardinghouse in Expedition.
Kemal was not that man. As if he feared she was too fragile for his pent-up emotions, he brushed his mouth over hers in a shy, tentative kiss.
“Gracious! Is that the whole of what you mean to do?” Bee hauled him bodily into her, pulling him down for a very different sort of kiss.
I looked away. As my arm brushed the basket, I remembered how General Camjiata had pieced together disparate images from Bee’s purloined sketchbook to guess how to capture me on the jetty in Expedition. Hastily, I unlaced the basket. I held out the skull so it faced the shining column of the dragon.
The cacica looked back at me. In my hands she was still a skull, but in the reflection I saw in the pearl mirror of the dragon’s scales, she was a living head.
“Your Highness!” I cried, startled by the apparition. “We are still traveling. I assure you, I mean to find your son Haübey and return you to him as soon as I am able.”
Her gaze fell on Bee locked in a fervent embrace with Kemal. “Distracted by kissing, as the young are wont to be. My thanks for the proper respect you have shown me, Niece. I give you warning. Trust not in fire banes. The ones you thought were your friends have betrayed you. People will speak and act in all kinds of ways because they do not believe there are ears or eyes to witness.”
“What do you mean?” I cried, but the creature that had once been the headmaster plunged beneath the surface and I was left with a skull in my hands.
The churning deeps turned as into glass. I saw through it into an unfathomable sea. Humble fish swam through currents made by memories of that which has happened, which we recall imperfectly, and that which is yet to come, which we cannot foresee.