The Unicorn Hunters: A Novel(56)
It set the sea-drake glimmering. Anne smelled salt. All around her was the silver of the sea, another daylight altogether. It felt as though she could take one step and the rest of it would be real: cold water and wind; she would be somewhere else. Her heart was racing. A spike of pain went through her head.
“Go,” Anne whispered to the sea-drake, covered in its blood.
It turned and plunged back into the light of its own day. A gout of water mingled with the blood on her, and when the wave subsided, the sea-drake was gone.
Anne’s knees gave way, her dress drenched in silver blood and the world wavering like water in her hazy vision, a wild mingling of daylight and starlight and winter shadows, as though all the days and nights of the world were happening at once and she had just been granted the eyes to see them.
She caught the astonished eyes of Julien Moreau, then realized she was falling. Moreau made an abortive gesture, speaking to his guard, but Louis caught her. Again. “I’m all right,” she said, breathing fast, eyes tight shut, trying to stand again, unable. She could sense her court beginning to cluster, could hear Isabeau’s voice and her brother’s exclaiming. She must stand, she must think. If only the world would stop spinning. Louis was still holding her up; she was smearing him with the sea-drake’s blood.
She said, choking, “The world is not as I thought.” All creation was a writhing knot of light and shadow. She pressed her face to his shoulder to block it out, felt his hand cradle her head. His voice in her ear. “Anne?”
Was there some virtue of madness in the dragon’s blood? She scrambled to collect her thoughts, found her tongue running on without her, whispering, “In the lost city, they rode sea-drakes across all the oceans of the world.”
And then, perhaps mercifully, she fainted.
* * *
Marguerite of France was greatly disturbed. Was this Moreau’s doing? The beast had come lunging out and flown at the duchess, a writhing knot of shining destruction. But Anne spoke to it and it stopped. The duchess dragged the spear from its mouth, spoke again, and the beast slithered away into nothing.
She had fainted before she could say anything else.
Moreau was staring at the girl with a nakedly shocked expression, surrounded by guards who didn’t know whether he was a threat or not.
The sea-drake was on a different scale than conjuring a rotten picnic in the forest. Had he meant Anne to die? Or had he betrayed Marguerite? Far from dying, the duchess had amazed all who saw her. Ballads would be written about it, the girl banishing a dragon with only her voice. Had Moreau meant for that to happen? To improve the duchess’s position?
No—Marguerite did not think he’d meant for that to happen. She did not think a man could feign such astonishment. What, then, had happened?
A sea-drake had appeared on dry land and answered the commands of the duchess of Brittany. The duchess had touched a unicorn. She was dangerous in ways that Marguerite didn’t understand.
But Anne was unconscious now, and there was no time to waste. Marguerite caught Jean de Rieux’s eye. He was standing over the duchess, who was limp in Orléans’s arms. De Rieux met Marguerite’s gaze. His face was absolutely colorless.
That was good enough.
She crooked a finger at her diviner, Volucris. “Come with me,” she said. “We have much to do this night.”
* * *
The duchess lay splashed with silver, unconscious in his arms. Beside her were her maids-of-honor, a few of her councilors, and De Rieux crying, “Highness, speak to me.”
Anne’s eyelids fluttered but she didn’t wake. She had both hands fisted in Louis’s doublet, getting silver on his clothes. “A litter!” De Rieux called, sounding panicked. “A priest!”
“Or I could carry her upstairs,” said Louis, keeping his voice to a tone of hard-held patience. “Where there are beds, physicians, and priests in plenty.”
“Carry her?” said De Rieux, as though he’d proposed carrying the duchess off for ravishing. That brat Isabeau darted up with Avaugour behind her. “Is she all right?”
Anne’s eyes fluttered open, as though her sister’s voice had reached her when theirs could not. She said, “I’m all right, Belle.”
Everyone was riveted, watching her. “Put me down,” Anne told Louis. He hesitated and then set her on her feet, steadied her when she swayed. She bit her lip and straightened her back. He let his arm drop, then caught her when she almost fell.
Anne looked ruefully down at her dress, at the silver on her hands. Her caul was torn, but the plaits, ruthlessly pinned, had not moved. One would have to be near to see how white her face was, how dilated her pupils.
Her maids-of-honor offered kerchiefs for the silver streaks of the sea-drake’s blood, but Anne shook her head at them.
Isabeau said, “That was him—that was him, the korrigan-king.”
Louis could feel Anne trembling.
De Rieux said, “Anne, what did you say to the beast?”
“To stop. In Keris they tamed the sea-drakes once. But I didn’t think it would heed me,” she whispered. “I wonder why it did?”
Everyone was staring, exclaiming, two physicians were circling; there was Hawiz with a cloak for her. Anne did not seem to see them, and no one seemed to dare touch her but him, splashed and glowing as she was with dragon’s blood. Her pupils had swallowed her eyes. Was it just shock giving her that unearthly, drunken look? She kept looking around at the world as though stunned by it. How many women would look as she did, not fouled and pathetic, but transcendent in splashed silver? He shook his head to clear it. The blood had gotten on his skin; perhaps it was affecting him too. Why were they still down here wasting time in talk?