What the Dragons Wept
In the painting on the wall, Aldric Vane was not holding a sword.
He was wearing a crown. A black crown, jagged as broken glass. And behind him, painted in red and orange that still seemed to flicker after centuries, the city of Caldris was burning.
"That's wrong," Rowan croaked. His voice had come back at dawn, rough as gravel. "That's backwards. The dragons burned Caldris. Aldric saved it."
"Is it wrong?" Talia didn't look away from the wall. "Or is everything we were taught wrong?"
* * *
She had worked all night.
By the time the sun rose over the lake, she had scraped the moss off an entire wall of the old hall with her knife, and Rowan had sat beside her with his palm pressed to the stone, feeding it just enough warmth to make the Wyrmscript glow. It was the first time he'd used the fire for something gentle. It was strangely easy. Like humming instead of shouting.
Now the whole wall was lit. It wasn't only writing. It was a mural, a story painted in panels from one end of the hall to the other, and Talia was reading it aloud, checking each line against Osric's pages spread on the floor around her.
"This first part," she said, pointing, "is the Age of Covenant. A thousand years, maybe more. Look." Dragons and people, side by side, like the drawing in Osric's cellar. Dragons shielding villages from storms. Dragons carrying grain over mountains. "The dragons protected the land. And the people gave them something back. It says here—" she traced a line "—the Covenant of Scales. A promise. Humans and dragons, bound together."
"Bound how?"
"I'm not sure yet. There's a word I keep seeing." She frowned. "Voice. Every dragon had a Voice. But this part is damaged."
Rowan looked. A long crack ran through the stone there, and a whole section of paint had flaked away into dust.
"And these are Wardens." Talia moved along. Humans riding on dragons' backs, in fine robes, with rings on their fingers. "The bonded riders. They lived here. This hall belonged to them." She hesitated. "It says they became… proud. Over the centuries. Lords. They thought they were better than ordinary people, because ordinary people didn't have dragons."
"So the dragons were ruling people," Rowan said. "The Order's right about that part."
"The Wardens were ruling people. That's not the same." But she chewed her lip. "Though it's not nothing, either."
Rowan looked at the painted Wardens for a long time. Their rich robes. Their rings. The way the ordinary people in the corners of the panels stood with their heads bowed while the riders passed above them.
"If I'd been born back then," he said, "I'd have been one of those. Down in the corner. Shoeing the Wardens' horses."
"Me too," Talia said. "Probably scrubbing their floors."
"So maybe people had a reason to be angry."
"Maybe they did." She didn't argue. That was one of the things he was starting to like about her. She never pretended a hard thing was simple. "But being angry at the Wardens isn't the same as what the Order teaches. The Order says the dragons were evil. All of them. Not the riders. The dragons." She tapped the wall. "And this doesn't say that. Not anywhere."
Pim wandered in around then, carrying two bowls of fish stew, and stopped dead in the doorway at the sight of the glowing wall.
"Is that magic?" he whispered.
"It's reading," Talia said. "Which is better. Put the stew down before you drop it."
He put it down. Then he sat cross-legged on the floor and stared at the dragons until Hedda came looking for him.
* * *
Hedda came to look at midmorning, with a mug of something hot. She walked the length of the mural once, silently.
"Keep reading," she told Talia.
The next panel showed a festival. Bright banners. A young dragon, small and clumsy, flapping over a crowd. A burst of flame, too big, too wild. And a girl falling.
"In the year before the Burning," Talia read, very slowly, "the young dragon Ashkeel lost control of its fire at the Summer Festival. A girl of fourteen was killed. Her name was Elsbeth Vane."
Rowan's head snapped up. "Vane?"
"Her brother, Aldric, was a steward of the Wardens. A common man. He begged the Warden Council for justice. The Council said it was an accident, and it was hidden, and no one answered for it."
The hall was quiet.
"The year before the Burning," Rowan said. "The year that's missing from all the history books. The page that was torn out of the Codex. That's what's on it."
"That's what my mother found," Talia whispered. "That's why the note said to ask."
She kept reading. Her voice was steadier than Rowan thought his would have been.
"Aldric learned the secret of dragonsteel. Iron quenched in the heart's blood of a dragon, which drinks the fire of dragons. From it, in secret, he forged a crown. The Hollow Crown. With it he trapped dragons, one by one, and drank their fire into himself."
The black crown on Aldric's head. The jagged, glass-like points.
"And on the Night of Ash, he turned that stolen fire on Caldris. He burned the city of the Wardens. And he told the world that the dragons had done it."
The next panel was the burning city. Aldric in the foreground, crowned. Fire pouring from his outstretched hands.
"He did it," Rowan breathed. "Aldric. Not the dragons. Him."
"Look at the dragons," Talia said.
They were in the sky above the burning city. Dozens of them. Not attacking. Not fighting. Circling, wings spread, while the city burned below. And in their center, largest of all, was a great dragon with scales the red of coals and gold beneath, and horns curved like a crown.
She wasn't breathing fire. Her head was bowed. And from her eyes ran two long streaks of silver paint.
Tears.
Rowan thought of the statue in Greywater. The carved stone dragon under Aldric's boot. The grooves running down her cheeks. Some sculptor knew, he thought. Some sculptor, three hundred years ago, knew the truth and hid it in plain sight, where only someone looking would ever see.
"Why didn't they fight back?" he said. His voice cracked. "They could've stopped him. Why didn't they?"
"The Covenant." Talia pointed at a line of script beneath the dragons. "The Scaled may never raise fire against the kin of their Voices. Humans. They'd promised never to hurt us. Even then. Even to save themselves."
Hedda set her mug down on a broken column. Very carefully, like it had suddenly become heavy.
"It's a good story," she said. Her voice was rough. "It doesn't change anything. The Regent is still the Regent. The knights still have swords. Truth doesn't win wars."
Talia turned on her. "Then why did they work so hard to burn it?"
Hedda opened her mouth. Closed it again.
For the first time since Rowan had met her, the leader of the Ashen Hand didn't have an answer. She looked at the weeping dragon for a long moment. Then she picked up her mug and walked out of the hall without another word.
* * *
The afternoon went quiet.
Talia kept working, copying every line into her notebook in careful, ink-stained handwriting, but Rowan noticed she'd stopped reading aloud. Her hand had started to shake.
He sat down beside her. He didn't say anything.
After a while, she put the pen down.
"She was right," Talia said. "My mother. She was right about everything. She found this, and she told people, and they killed her for it." Her voice broke. "And I was so angry at her. For years. I thought she'd chosen old books over us. Over me and Teo. I thought if she'd just kept quiet—"
She stopped. She pressed the back of her wrist against her eyes. Her shoulders shook, silently.
Rowan didn't know what to say. So he didn't say anything. He just sat close enough that their shoulders touched, and let the warmth of the ember in his chest spread out a little, gentle as sunlight on stone. Not fire. Just warmth.
Talia leaned against him. They stayed like that until the light on the lake turned gold.
"She didn't choose books over you," Rowan said at last, quietly. "She chose the truth. So you and Teo wouldn't have to grow up in a lie."
Talia wiped her face. "When did you get wise?"
"About two minutes ago. It'll probably wear off."
She laughed, wet and surprised. Then she picked her pen back up.
"There's one more panel," she said. "At the very end. I haven't read it yet. The moss is thickest there."
* * *
Rowan scraped the last of the moss away himself, then pressed his palm to the stone and let the warmth flow.
The final panel lit up slowly, line by glowing line.
It was the great dragon again, the Queen, alone this time. Not in the sky. On the ground, lying down, wings folded, eyes closed. Around her, seven small lights like stars were rising into the air. And on her brow, painted in white, was a mark.
A crescent. Crooked. Like a fingernail moon.
Rowan's hand went cold on the stone.
Slowly, he took it away. He turned it over. He looked down at his own left palm.
The pale crescent he'd had since he was a baby was glowing. Softly. Steadily. Exactly the same shape as the mark on the Dragon Queen's brow.
"Rowan," Talia whispered. "Rowan, that's—"
The voice filled his head. Not singing. Not warning. Just a single breath of recognition, warm and vast and full of something that felt almost like joy.
You found us.