“Pull what off?” asked Tippertail, who was Graybeak’s best mate in the fields.
“This marriage, of course,” Graybeak replied. “I hope the crown prince manages to get it done. The last one didn’t, did he, now? And they made as much fuss or more over his wedding week.”
“Only we didn’t get crumb cake,” said Flitmouse solemnly. And this was acknowledged with grave nods. No crumb cake; how could that marriage possibly have gone over well?
“Good thing, if you ask me,” said Stoneblossom, who never needed to be asked before stating an opinion, “that they went and got rid o’ that one, that Prince Lionheart. And lucky for Lady Daylily that she didn’t marry him first!”
“Hear, hear!” the groundskeepers agreed, clunking their mugs together as a toast.
“But surely Prince Lionheart couldn’t have been all bad.”
This was spoken by a newcomer, another groundskeeper from a different quarter of the Eldest’s estate, judging by the color of his hood. What he was doing here in South Stretch was something of a conundrum to the gathered crew, and they glanced at him sideways, not exactly unfriendly, nor exactly welcoming. Stoneblossom had given him a smaller slice of crumb cake than the rest.
When he spoke up now—fulfilling the role of uninitiated newcomers everywhere by putting his foot in his mouth—the others fixed him with stares of contempt.
“Not all bad?” said Graybeak. “Where were you those five years when he left us, run away to safety while we remained imprisoned? And where were you when, on the very week of his nuptials, he brought a dragon into the Eldest’s City—”
“Don’t be speaking of that!” said Stoneblossom with sudden severity. For when Graybeak spoke, all eyes had filled with haunted memories: memories of a cold winter’s day. Of smoke. And fire.
“Don’t be speaking of that,” Stoneblossom repeated. “Don’t go calling bad luck down upon this day by mentioning such things. The devil-girl was banished, the prince sent packing without his crown. It’s a new day for Southlands.”
“Aye,” said her husband, taking a deep draught of his cider. “Aye, a new day, a new crown prince, and very soon a new princess.”
“Here’s to the princess!” cried Tippertail with determined jollity, and the others took up his cry and clashed their mugs with such enthusiasm that hands and faces were soon sticky with cider. “Here’s to the princess!”
They raised their mugs again. But one little boy, a second cousin of Stoneblossom’s recently come to South Stretch, missed connecting his mug to Tippertail’s when something else attracted his eye, nearly causing Tippertail to lose the whole foamy contents of his mug down the front of the boy’s shirt. But the boy scarcely noticed, for he was busy pointing and saying, “Ain’t that the princess?”
Stoneblossom turned a stern eye upon the lad, prepared to scold him for a fool. But she took a moment to glance the way he pointed. “Iubdan’s beard!” she gasped and nearly dropped the plate of crumb cake she’d been passing round. “Look you over there!”
The groundskeepers turned to look beyond their little world of celebration out to the broader grounds in which they earned their bread each day. The Eldest’s parklands were not what they’d been before the Occupation. Elegant hedgerows and shaded avenues, long rolling swards of green—all now had given way to scorched craters and ruin. Trees stood like great, burnt matches, and the ground reeked of poison.
Dragon poison.
Once a dragon set upon a kingdom, its poisons remained in the soil for generations to come. It mattered not if the dragon flew away again, never more to be seen.
There was only so much the groundskeepers could do to restore order, much less splendor. But they were true if unsung heroes, doing battle every day to reclaim their king’s domain, far out of sight of the lords and ladies they served, lords and ladies they never saw.
So it was that, one by one, the groundskeepers muttered and swore as they watched none other than the prince’s bride, running alone down a broken path not far from their grove.
“It cain’t be her,” said Graybeak with dubious authority. “She’s gettin’ married.”
“Who else is it, then?” his wife demanded, and he had no answer. For who else could it be? Who else in the Eldest’s court boasted such a crown of curly ginger hair piled and pinned with fantastic elegance atop her head? Who else could wear a silken gown of silver and white, with billowing skirts and billowing sleeves; indeed, with so much billowing one half expected her to take flight? Who else could wear a coronet set with pearls and opals, a coronet that she even now—as the groundskeepers watched aghast—tore from her head and cast aside?
It was she, the prince’s bride-to-be. It was the Lady Daylily.
And she was running, skirts gathered, as though for her life.