Chapter 34 #2
“You remind me of Lord Wellington,” I said, and remembered what I had glimpsed from the air before landing.
Napoleon nodded, “A good general,” but he seemed distracted. His gaze surveyed my clothes and lingered on the dagger at my thigh before his eyes met mine again.
Fènnù’s impatience was building, a steepening slope toward violence. Privately, I cradled my binding to Yuánchi, a lodestone for my inner self.
Yuánchi’s binding was in motion. Flying. Then, through that link:
Lizzy. Where—
I heard it in my mind, like a draca’s speech, but the words were English, not the abstract comprehension that flowed from a draca’s thoughts.
“What?” I said. The voice had a woman’s timbre but was exceedingly faint, fading too soon for me to identify.
The emperor cocked his head. He seemed relieved by my outburst. He tucked a hand in his pocket and asked, “Do you know why you will not kill me?”
I licked chapped lips. “I am all attention.” Who had spoken?
“It would end this cycle too soon. The black dragon is sated for now, but her appetite for destruction will return. She needs it. You need it. She will spread the blight, and you will aid her.” When I said nothing, his relief faded.
His gaze returned to Gramr. “Vous êtes trop calme. You carry the dagger. You bound the black dragon. Where is your fury?”
It was difficult to focus on the conversation while resisting Fènnù’s influence.
For an instant, my control slipped, and anger swept through me, thudded into my pulse, but with it came memories—the insight of past wyves.
This man wants you to be angry, they warned, then they were silenced, locked out by Fènnù.
Manipulations all around me. Fènnù pressed her vengeance and fury into my mind while hiding the counsel of my past selves. This emperor teased me toward some unspoken goal.
Deliberately, I opened myself to the past. What does this man want from me? A dozen past selves answered. Slaughter. Annihilation.
Napoleon was a master strategist. Even the most scathing English editorials acknowledged that. He was also deeply informed about draca and the great wyves; Lydia had stolen a wealth of knowledge for him. He knew draca lore and history even I did not.
He had tried to assassinate me. When that failed, he woke the black dragon and used Fènnù in war, but he knew Fènnù was ultimately uncontrollable, a force of unfettered destruction, not a military weapon.
“Why are you in England?” I asked. “Entering enemy territory is dangerous.”
For a moment, his face closed. His honesty shuttered. That had been the right question.
“You were waiting when I came,” I continued. “You expected the wyfe of war to find you. Why? Why meet me at all? You know the black dragon is mad. Why gamble I would not obliterate your camp, emperor and all?”
His features were stone.
“A skilled general does not take senseless risks,” I finished. “You are here because the balance of victory lies here. In Surrey. And because you could still lose.”
He called over his shoulder in French.
A severely beautiful young woman stepped out of the tent.
She wore an exquisite emerald satin gown, although the bodice and collar were stained.
Her impractically dramatic bonnet was suited for a promenade on a springtime boulevard.
Unhesitating, she strode past the cowed officers and stood possessively beside the emperor.
Her eyes latched hungrily onto Fènnù then shifted haughtily to me. “Devrais-je la tuer?” she asked the emperor.
“Should she kill you?” Napoleon translated for me, politely.
The perfumer’s wide bonnet flapped as her head twirled to him.
I had known she was near, sensed her foul power, and her callous embrace of violence encouraged the anger I was resisting. My desire for revenge. My fury.
“I understood her,” I said through tight teeth.
“Are you not afraid she will kill you?” the emperor asked, copying my earlier question, but not for humor. He was quite serious.
“If I am harmed with the black dragon present, everyone will die.” My arm shivered as I fought the urge to draw the dagger.
He nodded and angled his head reproachfully at the perfumer, like she was a child who gave a foolish answer in a lesson. Her attention flicked warily between him and me.
“She makes you angry,” he noted.
Fènnù was drinking in my fury, tasting it, whispering, encouraging…
I hugged my binding to Yuánchi, my lifeline to sanity, and it brightened, brilliant with the strength of the dragon of healing.
And slowly, my fury matured into something difficult to bear but…
more real. More true. The anger spurring my racing heart ripened into grief, then mourning for my dear mother.
And through my brightened binding, the woman’s voice sounded again: Lizzy, you must find us!
Emma’s voice.
What had Darcy said? The emperor feared the great wyves, united.
The silence was eroding the perfumer’s confidence. She drew a small glass container from her pocket, dampened her finger, and raised it, trembling, to coat her lips. Her power seethed and grew as a dark citrus scent filled the air. Her oily blackness stretched out, probing.
“You are a wyfe of war,” Napoleon snapped impatiently. “You hear them, non? Cent deux, one hundred and two wyves before you. You feel them”—he thumped his fist on his chest—“in your heart! They cry for revenge.” When I did not answer, he said, “La dragonne noire has bound you. You must rise—”
The perfumer interrupted. “La dragonne n’est pas engagée.”
Finally, the emperor faltered. “The black dragon is not bound?”
“No,” I said.
Understanding crept into his face. “This is why you are sane…”
“You have a clever plan,” I said, “a daring plan. But it has failed.” I switched my gaze to the perfumer’s narrowed eyes.
“He expected me to kill you. He knew you were outmatched by a great wyfe, but he sacrificed you, sent you to goad the bull to fury. You were bait—pretty to look at, useful at times, but disposable. A lure to drive me to madness, or if that failed, to draw me here so he could provoke me, break my mind with the thirst for vengeance.”
I had spoken rapidly, and I could see she had not followed it all. She asked Napoleon a question; his answer sounded dismissive.
“I will take the black dragon,” she said. The strength around her surged as she grabbed for the dagger on my thigh.
The perfumer, though, was no wyfe of war. She was an aristocrat who rose through the French court, ruthless surely, but fighting her battles with beauty, intrigue, and rumor.
Left-handed, I caught her grasping hand easily, pinioning her wrist. She gave a perplexed cry, tugging ineffectually, unsure how to respond to physical force, let alone pain. Then she rallied, summoning her crawlers—
“Mary sends her regards,” I said and punched her with my right hand, a hooked blow that flattened the side of her ridiculous bonnet against her temple.
It was not a hard blow, not the shoulder-spine-hip alignment that delivers lethal force, but it would have been enough to stun a strong man.
The perfumer’s delicate head rocked, and she collapsed in a limp heap of stained satin, laced petticoats, and sprawling jewels.
The watching officers bustled importantly, gripping the hilts of their swords, but they did not draw them. They waited for their emperor.
“Your resistance changes nothing,” Napoleon said. “The black dragon has seeded the blight. England is doomed, only slower.”
I drew the dagger, a whisper of razor-edged dragon tooth, and he became very still.
“You searched for the great artifacts,” I said. “Your agents stole Gramr.” I lifted the serrated edge between our gazes, a rippling midnight line that divided our faces, left and right, thesis and antithesis. “But you never held it. Touch it now. Touch the blade. That is the path to its power.”
His eyes wondering, compelled, Napoleon rested a fingertip on the flat of the blade.
“Nothing,” I told him. “You feel no strength. No connection to the wisdom of the past.” I withdrew the dagger and pointed the hilt toward the fallen perfumer, mistress of poisonous crawlers, then to Fènnù behind me. “The power you covet is beyond your reach because you are not a wyfe.”
Fènnù’s relentless anger flared when I drew the dagger, a whirlpool around my mind. Now, she spoke: Rise, my queen. Seek vengeance. Cast down our enemy.
If grief is a wound, a laceration that pulses blood and makes us cry, then mourning is that first tender scar, our torn soul knitted clumsily together only to discover a hollow where something precious remains forever lost.
Your queen is dead, I thought. It was a simple thought, but Fènnù’s churning anger snagged and, for a moment, lessened. You grieve for her. I grieve for my mother. But grief should not be savored. Grief should heal.
You are my queen, Fènnù insisted. Our vengeance will reclaim your great empire.
“Your queen is gone,” I said aloud. “The empire you dream of will never come.”
I had spoken to Fènnù, but Napoleon heard, and his face clouded.
Yuánchi’s binding broke into my mind, melting the icy walls of Fènnù’s strength.
Lizzy! Emma’s voice was a dazzling sun. Yuánchi was much closer now, his binding brighter, but Emma had changed as well. Her voice was rich with loss and fortitude and certainty. The wyves must gather. Find us. Find Yuánchi.
I sheathed the dagger and left.