Chapter 55: TWO MONTHS NORTH

DIANA’S POV

Two months after Diana left Valence, the fact that Vharos ate all of his midday ration had become good news.

He also created no useful mystery.

Master Clair appeared delighted, or at least Diana had begun to understand that this was what delight looked like on him.

Vharos’s breathing remained steady. He made no attempt to stand, and the agitation from previous sessions had not returned. The dragonstone warmed only slightly during the controlled observation, while Vharos spent most of the session ignoring everyone and slowly consuming his food.

Diana recorded that too.

VHAROS EATING.

Raigoro looked over from the other chair.

"An ambitious conclusion."

Diana turned the board toward him.

SUPPORTED BY EVIDENCE.

Master Clair read it as he passed.

"Finally."

Diana gave him a look.

He remained unmoved.

The formal observation had already ended. Master Clair had collected the timing sheets, Healer Lou had completed her examination, and the keepers had begun their ordinary midday work around Vharos.

Diana remained in the second chair with the anatomy booklet open across her knees, while Raigoro stayed because three Command reports apparently required more attention than food.

Neither of them had noticed the hour.

Master Clair had.

"Enough."

Diana looked toward Vharos.

"He is stable."

She waited.

"For Vharos," Master Clair added. "And, apparently, for the rest of you. It is past midday."

The daylight entering through the high cavern opening had shifted considerably.

Raigoro checked the small clock near the keeper station with the air of a man who suspected it had behaved unreasonably.

Master Clair looked at him.

"Command Terrace will survive long enough for you to eat."

"I did not say otherwise."

"You were about to."

Diana closed her book.

A keeper’s assistant arrived before either of them could leave, carrying two covered trays.

Master Clair said, "Alma sent yours down when she discovered you had missed the household meal."

Of course she had.

Diana looked toward the second tray.

"And his?"

Master Clair glanced toward Raigoro.

"Command Terrace has also learned to account for predictable failures."

Raigoro looked at the tray.

"I eat."

"Eventually."

Master Clair walked away before rank could become relevant.

The two trays went onto a narrow worktable near the observation chairs.

Nothing about the arrangement resembled a formal meal. The keeper trays were plain metal, the bread was still warm, and a bowl of thick winter stew had been covered well enough to survive the walk down from the kitchens.

Vharos lifted his head when the smell reached him.

Master Clair pointed toward the dragon without turning around.

"You have eaten."

Vharos lowered his head again with visible disappointment.

Diana sat, and Raigoro took the other chair.

For several minutes, they ate without speaking.

The silence felt different from the one they had shared after the second-chair session. Diana had been surprised by that first quiet. This one was beginning to feel ordinary.

She looked toward Vharos.

The old dragon had resumed examining the remains of his own meal.

Diana wrote:

WAS HE ALWAYS THIS DIFFICULT?

Raigoro read the slate.

"Worse."

Diana waited.

He took another piece of bread.

"When he was young, he refused anything that had touched a blue feeding bucket."

Diana looked at him.

WHY?

"No one ever discovered."

She considered the answer, then wrote:

SENSIBLE.

Raigoro looked at her.

"You are becoming a bad influence."

Diana pointed toward Vharos.

ON HIM?

"On me. He was already impossible."

Diana looked back at the dragon.

Vharos appeared unconcerned by the accusation.

She wrote:

WHAT ELSE?

Raigoro paused.

"What else did he refuse?"

Diana shook her head.

WHAT ELSE DID HE DO?

"That is a large category."

GOOD.

Raigoro studied her.

"Why do you want to know?"

Diana held the chalk above the slate.

A useful answer should have existed.

Vharos recognized her. His medical history might matter. Something in his past might contain a lost piece of her own.

Every answer was true, but none explained why she had asked what he did as a young dragon.

Diana wrote:

CURIOUS.

Raigoro read it.

"All right."

He neither demanded a better reason nor treated curiosity as something she needed permission to have.

Diana looked down at the single word, erased it, and continued.

WHAT DID HE BREAK?

Raigoro looked amused.

"A diplomatic carriage."

WHY?

"It was red."

Diana looked toward Vharos.

The dragon continued eating without remorse.

She wrote:

THAT CANNOT BE THE WHOLE REASON.

"It was the only one he provided."

HOW?

"He burned one wheel and bit through the rear harness."

Diana stared at him.

"Fortunately no diplomat was inside."

FORTUNATELY?

"The ambassador disagreed about the amount of good fortune involved."

Diana bent over the slate to hide her amusement, though Raigoro clearly caught it. He continued eating without comment, and Diana appreciated the mercy.

She asked about Vharos’s first campaigns, and Raigoro answered with ordinary things rather than battle plans or classified routes.

Vharos had once refused to sleep inside a prepared Dragon Host shelter because another dragon had occupied it first. He preferred high rocky ground even when lower camps were warmer. He had stolen a captain’s winter blanket and carried it halfway up a watchtower before anyone noticed.

Diana wrote:

WHY?

"He wanted it."

THAT IS NOT A GOOD EXPLANATION.

"It was enough for Vharos."

Apparently so.

She asked what Raigoro ate during long campaigns.

"Whatever arrived." ℴ

BAD ANSWER.

"It is true."

WHAT DID YOU LIKE?

Raigoro took longer with that question.

"Hot food."

Diana stared.

He added, "Preferably recognizable."

She wrote:

YOUR STANDARDS ARE LOW.

"Campaigns improve gratitude."

Diana considered the man who now rejected over-sweetened tea while claiming anything recognizable had once qualified as desirable.

She could save that contradiction for later.

Daric entered carrying a Command folder and stopped just inside the observation area.

The two half-finished meal trays apparently told him everything he needed to know.

"I see the second chair has acquired provisions."

Raigoro looked at him.

"We were here through midday."

"Naturally."

Raigoro said, "Ignore him."

Daric handed over the report.

"That has always been his preferred strategy."

Diana was beginning to suspect Daric found something about the arrangement amusing, though she was less certain what.

The report concerned ordinary supply transfers between two western stations.

Raigoro read the first page, then the last.

Diana noticed.

Daric noticed her interest too, but neither commented.

He waited until Raigoro signed one instruction.

"Anything else?"

"No."

Daric’s attention briefly returned to the meal trays.

Raigoro looked up.

Daric appeared to remember somewhere more important he needed to be.

He left.

Diana wrote:

WHAT WAS THAT?

"Daric."

NOT HELPFUL.

Diana decided the problem had spread beyond recovery.

Master Clair eventually returned and informed them that Vharos required actual quiet even if neither of them did.

Diana closed her booklet while Raigoro gathered the reports.

Their meal trays were taken away.

The afternoon had produced no hidden truth from Vharos, no assassin for the investigation, and no answer from the foreign archives. Diana had simply eaten stew beside an old dragon while Raigoro told her about a destroyed carriage.

She thought about the meal twice on the walk back to the household offices and again that evening, which became irritating enough that she stopped counting.

The household accounting clerk brought the new monthly packet after dinner.

Diana reviewed room expenditure, winter linen replacement, kitchen transfers, guest stores, and several pages that seemed designed primarily to prove that candles could become a political problem when purchased in sufficient quantities.

Then she reached the date at the top of the next account period.

Diana paused.

She counted the weeks once, checked them again, and stared at the result.

Two months.

It had been two months since she left Valence wearing Selena’s name.

Fifteen days of that time had belonged to roads, mountain stations, snow, and the long journey north.

The rest had happened here.

Blackharrow.

Diana checked the date once more.

It remained stubbornly unchanged.

Alma was in the adjoining dressing room discussing a torn hem with one of the maids. For once, Diana was alone with the realization.

Two months felt both brief and impossibly large.

Diana still sometimes woke expecting the pale ceiling of her Valence rooms. The wedding remained close enough that she remembered which pin in Selena’s dress had pressed hardest into her ribs, the weight of the crest over her heart, and the Blood Compact.

She remembered her first night in Blackharrow too, when Raigoro had stood inside her rooms and every movement of his hands had felt like information she needed for survival.

The Citadel no longer required that kind of conscious study.

Diana knew which corridor held the morning cold longest. She knew which military bell sent Daric toward Command Terrace before anyone finished explaining the problem. She knew the secured stair leading to Vharos.

Mistress Hale now brought Diana problems instead of explanations about why Diana had been consulted. Master Clair expected her to separate an observation from a conclusion.

Even Raigoro had acquired ordinary habits.

He read the bottom page of a report first when he suspected someone had hidden the important number there. He disliked over-sweetened tea. He answered questions about Vharos more easily than questions about himself.

Diana knew these things now, though she could not remember deciding to learn them.

She could remember when Raigoro saying walk with me had made her count every door between them and the nearest occupied corridor.

Had she counted any that afternoon?

Diana searched her memory of the walk back from Vharos’s cavern and found herself beside Raigoro, thinking about a dragon who hated red carriages.

She had forgotten to count.

Fear remained.

Raigoro still did not know the whole truth, and Diana’s fear of what would happen when he learned it had not disappeared.

Selena Valence remained between them in every formal record, every legal document, and the covenant itself.

Diana had no certainty about what Raigoro would do when he learned exactly who Odran had sent him. Blackharrow law was another uncertainty, along with whether everything she had begun to build here would survive the answer.

Yet refusing one of Raigoro’s questions no longer sent Diana searching for the nearest unlocked door.

His title had stopped feeling like an argument he might use to take whatever she refused to give. His hands no longer required her attention simply because he stood nearby.

During the past two months, the fear had changed shape.

The household papers still bore the title Grand Duchess, and another question came with them.

How much of this safety belonged to Diana?

How much had been given to Selena Valence?

Diana still had no answer she trusted.

She folded the monthly account.

A bell sounded through the Citadel.

Diana looked toward the sound.

The signal belonged neither to Dragon Heights nor a military muster.

Another bell answered from higher in the Citadel.

Diana was already on her feet when someone struck the outer door.

Alma emerged from the adjoining room and opened it.

A messenger stood outside, breathing hard.

"Civilian emergency."

Diana reached for her slate.

"Rellan Mine."