26. Lightning and Light Feet
Agadart is discomfited by her new surroundings...
The Queen’s Aerie is a MMF fantasy romance (romantic fantasy?) in 57 parts that I serialized throughout 2023/2024! If you are just now joining the story, you can catch up by starting here. Full story ToC here.
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Previously: The fleet made shore in Watt.
Agadart eventually tore herself away from the upper deck to head down to assist Doctor Worthan. She had not meant to get quite so poetic with Mani — Matrica Roki — but she could not have stopped herself even if she had tried. It wasn’t even just watching so many Wattish dragons in flight, it was the sight of the land itself. It felt familiar, but as if from a dream. Both the dark, craggy rocks covering the shore falling away from the coastal city and the mountains that rose steeply beyond rang with age and something nearly electric. She felt as if she were standing on an open field in a lightning storm, waiting to be struck down. It was unsettling but alluring and she had forced herself to leave it behind to go below decks.
She found Doctor Worthan tying up one of his trunks, cursing loudly until he noticed Agadart in the doorway. “Maid Aegirine! Done mooning after the dragons?”
She wrung out her skirts, watching the water trail away across the floorboards. “They are quite the sight.”
Worthan frowned. “Did you fall over the side?”
“No, the admiral was playing dragon games, at least according to Matrica Roki.”
Worthan chortled like a kindly uncle. “Not much change from when he was a youth, then.”
“It is not a side of him that I am familiar with,” she said primly.
He just laughed again, but a bit more ruefully. “And not one you are likely to see much more of, given the circumstances.” He kicked the trunk, making it rattle. “We’ll be taking the train across, to Suychet, just south of the Peveillin Cliffs. By all reports the fighting has not made it inland, although at great loss. How long we can keep it up, I don’t know.” He sighed heavily and looked up at her. “We need to talk.”
“Of course, Doctor.” She sat down at her usual study spot, even though the desk there was now empty and bare. He sat down with a huff.
“You are barely trained, by traditional standards. But war is making experts of us all, in a variety of ways. I have asked both the Matrica and Mistress Seraphinite that you be allowed to continue as my assistant. All of my trained doctors and nurses have already been given assignments all across the land and cannot be spared, especially the ones at or near the battle zone.”
She was actually relieved to hear it, for several reasons, two of whom had names dear to her. “I understand.”
“I don’t think you do, but you’ll find out soon enough. So! How familiar are you with the social mores of Wattish nobility?”
“Honestly? Very little. There was not much cause to study it.” That was as true in her previous life as it was for her as a dragon maid.
“I’ll see if I can lay my hands on a copy of Angelique’s for you.”
“Angelique’s?”
“Angelique’s Guide for Young Kits and Their Kin. Usually assigned as part of etiquette lessons for noble children. Obviously beneath you but it does cover the basics.”
“I would appreciate it, then.” She paused. “I do have a question.”
“Yes?”
“I know that discussing the historical problem of a lack of a dragon queen for Watt is generally considered rude, so I wished to ask you about it first.”
He frowned. “It is rude, but not…not because it’s rude. It’s rude because it is upsetting. The dragons feel the emptiness of her absence keenly. That is true even with a powerful prince who is a direct descendant of our last queen, Queen Esthae, may she fly in peaceful skies eternal.” He bowed his head in respect before continuing. “So what is your question about it?”
“For Kaaltendt, our queen, though revered, is merely that: our queen. That she is a dragon is merely incidental.” She paused, trying to frame her question.
“So now that you’re here, and see so many dragons frolicking about, you are wondering what the big deal is?”
“I suppose so, yes.”
He looked out the porthole, considering his words. “I think maybe because Kaaltendt has so few dragons, that her presence is not quite as overwhelming as it would be otherwise. Mind you, I can’t say what having a Queen Dragon of Watt would be like, none of us can. But without her magic to infuse our land with its natural power, we all feel lackluster, even those of us who are not dragons.”
She frowned. “But the land already feels electric to me. As if as soon as I were to step on it, it would…it would light up around me. So I wondered why it would feel that way without a queen.”
He stared at her for a long, long time. “It shouldn’t.”
“It does,” she said, straightening up, slightly affronted that he would question her on it.
“You are perhaps dragonkin?”
She paused, but then nodded. What could that knowledge hurt her, here in Watt? “Yes. My paternal uncle.”
“Hm. He is in service, I expect?”
“He is not. It’s not something we care to mention, but he absconded for the Westlands rather than go into the Dragon Corps.”
“Ah, how inconvenient. Well, that does explain some things about you. That said, it’s still curious that you would feel that way about Watt. Usually dragons only feel that kind of connection with their own territory…but you never did?”
“No sir.” She tried to remember her youth on her father’s lands, but as much as she loved the Orange Hills of Battenruck and missed her father’s home, they never called to her like this small port city in a foreign land. That much, she was not willing to share with the doctor.
He tapped the table between them for a few beats. “Can’t think of a reason for it. Alert me immediately if the feeling intensifies or, I don’t know, changes in any meaningful way.”
“Of course, Doctor. I will keep an eye on it.”
He stood up with a groan. “I am eager to be off of this ship. Let’s finish with the packing and get to one of the transports. Here, I want you to carry this bag to shore yourself; it contains some of the rarer and more valuable medicines. I don’t trust those sailors not to throw it around like a rubber ball.”
She did not laugh at that, but just barely. By the time she was crawling over the towering rail of the ship to scale the ropes down — refusing all offers to be carried, which some other dragon maids accepted with delight — she was carrying that bag and two more satchels in addition to her own.
When she was finally deposited on the docks, she was reunited with the person she least wanted to be around, Mistress Seraphinite. Agadart had not missed her presence during the trip over, when they were on different ships. Her cousin gave her a cold, blank look but focused on organizing the maids and all their trunks and bags and supplies.
It was slow progress as they were herded down the docks to the port city proper. Agadart was keenly aware of the ground under her as it shifted from the dirty port water to craggy beach to roads and avenues. The land thrummed under her feet. Every step closer took her breath away, and she had to concentrate on breathing or end up panting like a dog. When her foot first settled on the beaten dirt lane off the wooden dock, it felt like a pop of effervescence in her veins and she had to stop to take a deep breath in. Even the air felt charged, even though there were only light clouds in the sky above them.
One of the other maids asked her if she was feeling well, which brought Agadart back to her senses.
“Not entirely,” she said, trying to sound as pathetic as possible. “Setting foot on the ground was disconcerting, was it not?”
“Oh, it left me unbalanced not to be walking around on a swaying deck anymore too! They talk about ‘sea-legs’ but then never mention having to adjust to ‘land-legs’!” The young woman smiled at her own joke, and Agadart smiled back at her pleasantly.
She asked around a little more, not enough to come across as suspicious, but it appeared that Worthan was correct in that no one but Agadart was experiencing the odd feeling of the air fermenting her very blood.
They were ordered into marching formation eventually, and Agadart took her place among the detachment of dragon maids as they made a spectacle of themselves, walking through the city like a very drab flock of birds.
Unfortunately, for the time being, all the dragon maids were being billeted in a large warehouse set out with cots. It was better than the hammock she had been relegated to during the trip, but not by much.
“You will be expected to behave in accordance with the corps’ rules,” Mistress Seraphinite snapped at her as she passed, ostensibly talking generally to all of them, but it was not hard to notice who it was directed to. The other maids skittered as far away from Agadart as they could.
Later, she called the maids to formation before dinner in a large field that probably served as a storage area members of Her Majesty’s Dragon Corps.
“We are dragon maids here to assist the dragons of Kaaltendt. They are our focus and our priority. As we get closer to the front lines, you will be asked to assist in the war effort in many different ways. I encourage you to do so, when you can, but never to the detriment of your duty! Am I understood?”
“Yes, Headmistress Seraphinite!” they all chorused loudly.
“We are here as guests of a foreign nation. Behave like it. Dismissed!”
Agadart let all the other maids flow around her but remained in place. As she was left standing alone in the field, Mistress Seraphinite finally acknowledged her. She walked over, slowly, making it clear that she had no need to hurry to Agadart’s bidding, instead focusing on talking to Maid Pyrite who was rarely out of her orbit. Agadart wondered, as Maid Pyrite glared at her, if she knew their secret.
“Is there something you need to discuss with me, Maid Aegirine?”
“Yes, Headmistress. I just wanted to confirm that I am still assigned to Doctor Worthan’s staff.”
“As you are all the staff he has right now: yes, you are.”
“Thank you, Headmistress.”
Mistress Seraphinite’s eyes narrowed, and she stepped a little closer, lowering her voice. It seemed unnecessary to Agadart, since they were in the middle of the field and no one else was present aside from Maid Pyrite.
“Do not let the feel of being on foreign soil make your feet light, cousin,” Bertrag said, almost hissing the words. Maid Pyrite glared even harder at Agadart, which at least answered the question of whether or not she knew who Agadart was, and her relation to Bertrag…who was still talking. “I know the strangeness of it sets all of our blood to singing but you represent more important things than family here.”
She turned and walked away, Maid Pyrite on her heels, before Agadart could muster any reaction to it. It seemed that her cousin was experiencing the same bone-deep electric sensation that she was, standing on the soil of Watt.
Agadart wished she understood what it meant.
