32. Meeting the Duke
Agadart finally gets some (unwanted) answers...
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: Mani and Ro try to put the clues together...
Agadart shifted to try and flex her feet as the deck swayed. She was grateful that her kidnappers had taken off the blindfold when they lugged her up over the side of the small boat, because the motion of being on the water while blindfolded had been giving her uncharacteristic seasickness.
In fact, her kidnappers had overall been polite and respectful, for kidnappers. At least they were once they let her out of the sack they had shoved her unconscious body into at the train station. The three people who came for her were stout and obviously used to fighting, but Agadart thought she had put up a fairly good defense right up until one of them managed to get close and shove a rag covered in the most foul smelling thing she had ever had the misfortune to smell over her nose. The next thing she knew, she woke up being dumped out of the bag on the beach of a small inlet, trussed up like a bird for the pot. They had blindfolded her immediately and kept it there as they put her in a small rowboat, and had not taken it off until they were all aboard the boat that was in the process of, she assumed, sailing out to sea. Beyond that she had no idea where they were headed. Her kidnappers were not exactly loquacious.
All in all, though, they had not been purposefully abusive or tried to harm her in any way, just kept her tied up to a post below decks.
While she was grateful for the courtesy, it was profoundly odd for kidnappers, she thought.
The trip kept going and going, and she was exhausted both from the train trip over the whole of the Isle of Watt followed by being kidnapped, so she found herself waking up occasionally without remembering falling asleep. At some point, one of her kidnappers had thoughtfully tucked a blanket around her while she slept, and it was only when she woke up to find it there did she realize that the cabin she was in was getting colder.
“Wake up.”
Agadart startled awake again at the words. She looked up at a short, squat man who resembled a rectangle. He spoke with a soft, melodious accent that she couldn’t place, and was clean shaven in the common manner of sailors the world over, with a mop of light brown curls on his head. He wasn’t young, but not particularly old either, and did not wear any kind of uniform.
“I demand—” She stopped to cough, her throat dry and parched.
He just raised an eyebrow at her, smirking.
“Ahem. I demand to know who has kidnapped me, and when I will be returned to the Isle of Watt.” She wheezed more than she spoke the words, but was proud to have gotten them out.
“Not your home, why do you want to go back there?” He grabbed a stoppered gourd that was hanging off a hook on the wall by a leather strap, and then stepped over to her. He opened it and crouched down to hold it to her lips. She figured there was nothing to gain by being stubborn, so let him dribble some water into her mouth.
When he stepped back to hang the water bottle up again, she almost answered by explaining that she was a dragon maid and had been assigned to Suychet the same as any soldier, but she wasn’t sure that her kidnappers knew who she was. What if they had kidnapped the wrong person by mistake? She did not want them to realize that and decide that she was expendable, so instead, she just kept her mouth shut.
He shrugged. “You’re not going back, so it doesn’t matter. We’re almost at our destination, and I wanted you to be fully awake when we get there.”
That was ominous, but again she decided that silence was the better part of valor. He turned and left her alone again in the cabin.
The noise crept on her unnoticed at first, but once she became aware of it, it was like a cacophony surrounding the boat. She had only been to a few port cities in her time, and the noise seemed similar, but not quite. She had no doubt they were surrounded by other vessels, probably a number of much larger ones if the shifting of the boat was any indication. But she knew enough of maps to know that there was no way they were near a coast, not in the short trip they had taken thus far. There weren’t even any islands between Watt and Iskaryyva along any longitude. Yet not long after the kidnapper had left, she felt and heard the sounds of their boat being docked.
A different person came in to untie her from the post and to free her feet for walking. He graciously helped her up and held her steady as she stomped a little to get blood flowing quickly. She thought this was a most bizarre set of kidnappers.
They didn’t even blindfold her again, which was the biggest clue she had that they were far, far away from being spotted by any Wattish dragons. Her current escort led her up the narrow, steep stairwell to the deck, where the other kidnapper she knew was waiting for her along with three others she did not know. Just from looking, she could not tell who was in charge, so instead of addressing them she turned to look out over the rail, and gasped.
The ship was tied to a dock attached to a massive, multi-storied floating platform. It was massive in size, and had at least six other ships tied up to it, most of them large military ships that loomed over everything beneath them. The boat she was on was insignificant in comparison.
They were also, perhaps unsurprisingly, ships of the Iskaryyva Imperial Navy. She held back a shiver, although that might have been due to the cold winds blowing over the massive dock. Above them, countless numbers of dragons flew in large, overlapping circles or figure-eight formations, some coming in to land on the very top floor of the platform, which was bare except for a small cabin on the far edge. The dragons were every color under the sun, from deep ruby red to bright yellow and glistening black. A few wore muted, flat colors, and others were so reflective that they appeared colorless, just mirroring the light around them.
They walked her down the steep gangplank, the dark water below them sloshing against the boat. They were in the middle of the ocean, and there was no telling how deep the water was that she was stepping over. She looked up as soon as her feet were on the dock proper. Her escort, all five men, walked with her, almost like an honor guard, towards a staircase up to the floor just under the top deck. As they got closer, she realized that the whole floating city was made up of strange kinds of ships lashed together and anchoring the platform together. They had no masts and she noticed when they walked over a section they were actually sitting on the water like summer bugs on a pond.
She was walked over a bridge onto what was obviously a large, formal receiving room. Even weirder than all of that was how so many people stopped to stare at her. They all wore Iskaryyva navy uniforms, or Iskaryyva style civilian clothes, all heavy cloth and drab colors. She knew she looked out of place in her Kaaltendt dragon maid uniform and her neatly braided hair, but she did not think she warranted such close scrutiny.
The walk ended abruptly in a fine, large office that was just off the opulent receiving room. It looked a bit like every high-ranking military officers’ office she had ever seen growing up, filled with expensive but sedate furniture and military-themed decorations like maps and exotic weapons. Including, she realized with a chuckle she barely suppressed, a mounted tragart knife in pride of place, like an exotic trophy…the same knife her father and her mother and everyone she knew carried, a utilitarian instrument that was as common in her homelands as fish in the sea.
“Ah, Agadart ver Kleelan.”
She snapped her attention to the man who used her real name. He was old and wrinkled in that flabby way of officers who led from a desk, but there was something dangerous about his eyes that had her on edge.
“I don’t know why you would call me that,” she said. “I’m Maid Aegirine of the Kaaltendt Dragon Maids Corps.”
“Oh, I know.” He tapped a folder in front of him, and then stood up. He was short, and yet his presence still took up the entire room. “Forgive me. I’m Duke Paruask of Ittar, Second Prince of Iskaryyva.”
Agadart inhaled quickly, almost choking. The older brother of Emperor Rhezv, who by all reports had been instrumental in putting his younger brother on the imperial throne.
She bowed, pulling on the hand of the man holding her arm. “Your Grace.”
“Such excellent manners.” He smiled, wolfish. “Put her there and leave us.”
She was tugged quickly into a stiff-backed wooden chair before her escort quickly jogged out of the office. Paruask came around the desk and then leaned against it, folding his arms over his chest. Despite his stature, he was imposing, and she thought that when he had been a young man he had probably been quite handsome. As it was, years of hard military living were carved into the wrinkles of his face and the leathery skin.
“You don’t look like much to me, Lady ver Kleelan, but you’ve certainly caused His Imperial Majesty a lot of trouble.”
She decided that keeping her mouth shut would continue to be her best policy.
“Losing Baron Stewardt was a blow, especially to a clever counter-agent such as yourself.”
She opened her mouth to disagree with the description of her as a “clever counter-agent” but fortunately caught herself in time.
He huffed in amusement. “Don’t worry, we didn’t go through all this trouble just to execute you.”
“Then why go through this trouble at all? As I’ve said repeatedly, I’m just a dragon maid of Kaaltendt. I’m worthless for ransom, even if I was this ‘Lady ver Kleelan’. I do know enough about Queen Theaedra and her king to know they won’t blink at letting me die in foreign hands with war on the horizon.”
He looked bored. “Are you seriously arguing for me to just have you thrown overboard for the fish?”
She paused. “Ah. No, that’s not my plan.”
“Good, because it’s not my plan either. Frankly this isn’t my plan at all. I think my brother was rattled in his egg, but he gives the orders, so if he wants Lady Agadart ver Kleelan as his empress, then that’s who he gets.”
“What?”
