Chapter 7
Despite Noah’s best efforts, the dry scale he had suspected, and later confirmed, was slow in healing. Iris questioned him about it at length over lunch one day and listening in, Portia almost felt sorry for him. Interrogations were never fun.
‘Which remedy did you try?’ her great-aunt asked. So much for resting and minding herself while they cared for the dragons in her stead. Clearly that didn’t mean they could escape her scrutiny. And she missed nothing.
‘I used Fittbly’s balm. It’s always worked for me in the past. But this is a stubborn case.’
Portia stirred her soup, and then pulled a piece off her bread to feed to Jade. Her scales were looking a bit papery as well, which was a worry.
‘Fittbly’s is usually more than adequate, but not always.
They use much cheaper ingredients than they used to but claim it’s to keep the cost low.
In the wild of course, the teacup dragons go after olives, gather a great pile of them and roll around to crush them like little hedonists.
Marchinet wrote about it in his book. Some of the illustrations are fanciful but I believe the theory is sound.
And, of course, the great dragons had remedies of their own.
Art made a study of it, years ago and he had a marvellous recipe that might be better in this case.
Since I’m not allowed to do anything useful,’ Iris said pointedly, ‘Portia could make it up for you.’
Portia had not expected to be drawn into this so was taken unawares. She could do what now? Portia frowned at her aunt. ‘I don’t have the recipe.’
‘It’s in that old book of Art’s. He wrote it down for me. He had it from’ – she waved her fingers in the air as if that might help her to remember – ‘that scholar we met in Elanholm a few years before Edward got married. What was his name again, Portia?’
Portia didn’t know. She was about to say as much when she noticed the look of wonder on Noah’s face, the way his spoon had stopped halfway to his mouth.
‘You went to Elanholm? Before the great dragons left?’
Iris sat back with the broad smile she always wore when she recalled the time travelling in dragon country.
‘Ah yes. Such a beautiful city, it was, lodged so high in the mountains. Dragon-made and quite unlike anything I’d ever seen.
We had to get them to bring us up in those silk gondolas they had.
Better than on donkeys like they have to use now though.
’ She shook her head as if imagining a terrible trial.
Noah stared at her as if he had discovered an entirely new breed of dragon.
‘It was the heart of the dragon kingdom, before they closed the borders. It vanished.’ He clearly didn’t just believe it.
He knew it. Many people had tried to find it, Portia knew, and it wasn’t there.
There were fanciful stories in the broadsheets sometimes, rumours of dragons still to be found, but no one really believed it any more.
Iris shook her head. ‘The city didn’t vanish.
It’s still there. The dragons just took themselves off elsewhere and have no intention of letting humankind know where.
Such foolishness, that whole stupid situation.
Poor Art and Edward got all tangled up in it and no one listened to reason.
It could have gone very poorly indeed. Alincourt isn’t far from the border, is it? ’
‘Not far. We used to sneak over, my brother and I, but we never found any signs of dragons anywhere.’
Iris sniffed. ‘Well, you wouldn’t. If a great dragon wants to be elsewhere, no one is going to find them.
Is this why you want to study them? The teacup dragon is the closest thing we have left to the great dragons.
You said in your letters that you wanted to mount an expedition to Elanholm and that studying the teacup dragons might help you understand their cousins, and perhaps even find them.
I said at the time it was ambitious. We have so many unanswered questions. Is that still your plan?’
He nodded, and for a moment, Portia thought his eyes darted between them, as if deciding whether to answer. ‘Yes. Well, eventually. Of course, I need funding, and the practical experience which is part of the reason I’m here and—’
‘And a mountain of permissions. Not just from the royal court either. The amount of paperwork the Academy insists on these days… I think it’s all purposely designed to put people off.’
‘It’s there for good reason,’ Portia interrupted, the urge to defend the Academy still strong no matter what had happened to her.
‘And it’s not just Shinael. Elanholm doesn’t want us visiting.
The humans there blame us for the absence of the dragons.
They’ve made that more than clear. The chances of an international incident—’
‘Well, you can hardly blame them after what happened.’ Iris pushed the bowl back.
‘What did happen?’ Noah asked.
‘We almost went to war,’ the old woman said softly, sorrowfully, and her gaze grew distant.
‘My poor boys, Edward and Arthur, tried to stop it, but… well, people with a fixed idea and a great plan in their heads rarely listen to reason.’ Portia had never heard her aunt talk about what had happened with her father, her uncle, and the dragons before.
A great plan… Was that what had happened?
Was that what made the king call him a traitor?
‘And it was our fault. If you do ever manage to get there officially, I’m not sure what they’ll let you find, Noah.
The humans of Elanholm are as tight-lipped as the dragons ever were.
Few of them have any reason to trust us.
The royal court sent people to find out what happened to them before, or maybe just seek out dragonkind secrets to bring back to Shinael.
Some of them never returned. Others couldn’t even remember their names.
It’s not a quest to undertake lightly. Dragonkind used magic as easily as breathing.
Their mages learned their lessons well and had few qualms about turning it on us.
Well, we had no qualms about turning it against them either, despite our laws governing its use.
If you go, make sure it’s for the right reasons.
And that you trust the right people to get you there. Won’t you?’
She fixed Noah with such a piercing look that he almost flinched. Portia watched him catch himself, meeting Iris’s gaze with a look of innocence of which Portia was instantly suspicious. What was Noah hiding from them? And what were his reasons for wanting to go to Elanholm?
‘Are you trying to tell me not to go?’
Iris laughed and the moment of tension shattered.
‘No, I’d never try to stamp out anyone’s dream.
I know you can’t stay here, Noah, more’s the pity.
You are doing good work and the dragons love you.
Even Portia is softening a bit.’ Portia glared at her great-aunt, even more suspicious now.
What was she up to? Iris sighed. ‘Well, maybe a little?’
Portia didn’t know what to say to that. She was not softening at all. Portia Starling was made of steel and he ought to know it by now.
‘The Academy has rules for a reason,’ she said again. ‘Elanholm’s no place for the unwary, nor the unmagical.’
And he was as unmagical as it got, wasn’t he? The thoughts of what the unscrupulous could do to him didn’t bear thinking about. He’d have no defences whatsoever.
Noah flinched again, his cheeks flushing this time – embarrassment perhaps, or anger.
She wasn’t sure. And now the words were out, she felt a rush of shame.
She shouldn’t have said that. How many people had told him that he couldn’t follow his dreams because he wasn’t magical?
Or wasn’t good enough? Probably the same people who had said the same thing about her because she was a Starling.
‘I am going to go,’ he said, his voice dangerously quiet and suddenly she believed him.
She knew that kind of determination. It was like looking at her own resolve to prove herself written large across his face.
‘I’ll do all the groundwork I have to, every grunt job going, and jump through all the hoops, but I will go. ’
So much for working here looking after the teacup dragons then, she realised.
The moment a better offer came along he’d be away from Starling Island in the blink of an eye.
This was only a stopgap for him, the groundwork, a grunt job.
He didn’t care about the teacup dragons here so much as see them as a means to an end.
His interest was only in their great cousins, and what they could teach him about them.
The crushing disappointment that thought hammered into her chest took her breath away. She’d thought better of him, she realised. And that had been a mistake. Clearly.
‘Gilden, that was his name!’ Iris exclaimed suddenly.
‘Lovely man. He was a scholar in Elanholm and he even came here visiting your father and Art, oh… years ago. Before you were born Portia. He gave us the recipe. For the balm? An old dragonkind remedy. It’s in Art’s book now.
It’s much more effective than any commercial product. Portia?’
‘What?’
‘You can make it up, can’t you? It’s a simple enough process and we should have all the ingredients here on the island I believe, or a local alternative.
Art maintained that there were much better options here for most remedies.
That’s the kind of thing you excelled at in your studies, wasn’t it?
Ophelia was always going on about it. Your potions and whatnot. ’
Portia took a careful, calming breath. ‘My studies are not just potions and whatnot.’
‘Really?’ Iris sniffed and stirred her soup. Was she angling for an argument? How bored was she? ‘What is it then?’