“You mean they summoned you? Like I did when I was six?”
Lightning looked slightly offended. “Was here.”
“Oh, of course,” said Chantel, not quite understanding this.
The dragon preened his golden wings. “Genius loci,” he said modestly.
“Okay,” said Chantel. “Um, good.”
This seemed to satisfy the dragon. He turned away from the pictures, squeezed past Franklin and Chantel, and slithered up the dark passage.
Chantel followed his long gold-scaled tail as he swished, snake-like, through caverns and galleries. Marvelous ripples of flowstone hung like glistening curtains. Crystals sprouted up from the floor in places, and there were curious rubbles of rounded rocks that were really, Chantel found when she touched them, all one stone.
Yet it seemed to Chantel that someone had been at work here, sometime, forming the stone, smoothing out places to walk and even places to sit.
Once they passed a drawing of stick-figure people standing in a circle.
Chantel’s heavy wet robes clung to her legs and tired her.
At last they reached a huge chamber, bigger than the room where Chantel had met the king. This was very clearly a dragon’s room. It had an arc-shaped dragon bed along one wall, and several chests which, in the nature of things, must contain treasure. A waterfall tumbled from halfway up the wall, filling a shallow pool that fed a stream that babbled away into the darkness of a side passage. Beside the pool were a human-sized table and chairs.
We’re not the first people to come here, Chantel thought with a stab of jealousy. And then—of course we’re not. If he’s really as old as he says, maybe he’s been other people’s familiar over the centuries.
The dragon settled himself along the couch with a contented sigh. His tail snaked around and tapped one of the chests. “Things.”
“You want me to open it?” said Chantel.
The dragon nodded.
There was a key in the chest. She turned it and lifted the creaking lid. Inside were mostly ordinary things: blankets, sheets, a winter cloak, some old-fashioned-looking robes, all slightly musty. Some dishes and silverware, and a couple of pots. Housekeeping, in fact. The only unusual thing was a cup made of gold, with an elegant enameled painting on it, showing the sea and a high green hill beside it. On the hill were tiny people, standing in a circle. They reminded Chantel of the stick figure people she’d seen on the tunnel wall.
She turned the cup over in her hands. She thought it must be very, very old.
“Clothes,” said the dragon. “Wet.”
He was right. Chantel put the cup back. She dug around in the chest and found some robes. She handed one to Franklin.
He made a face at it, but they both changed their clothes anyway, turning away from each other.
She quite liked the robe she’d found that fit her, which was warm and purple and had many interesting pockets, inside and out. It had an enormous dragon embroidered in green and gold, wrapping all the way around the robe with its head on one shoulder and its tail at the hem.
She looked at her reflection in the pool. Mistake. Her eyebrows weren’t completely gone from the dragon’s flame, but her eyelashes were. Her sea-wet, flight-swept hair was a mess. And there was something else. Maybe it was just the ripples in the pool, but she didn’t look the least bit shamefast or biddable.
She looked like a girl who rode dragons.
She was surprised to discover the bundle of cakes had stayed in her sodden robe. She hung up the wet clothes on rock outcroppings in the wall, while Franklin stood around looking annoyed, and also rather old-fashioned in a red silk robe with gold lions embroidered on it.
“Think now,” said the dragon. “Plan. Sit.”
What Chantel was thinking was that she wanted to get out of here. But you couldn’t very well argue with Lightning.
She sat. Franklin sat across from her. She undid her handkerchief full of cakes and looked inside. Everything was smooshed. She reviewed in her head in what order she properly ought to offer the cakes. She and Franklin were the guests, but the dragon was certainly the oldest. “Would you care for a cake?” she asked the dragon.
He shook his head.
Franklin grabbed a tart without waiting to be asked. He looked at it dubiously, and then wolfed it down and reached for another.
Chantel took a battered pink-frosted cake. But she wasn’t really that hungry. She set it down on the table, where it oozed pink seawater.
“Now,” said the dragon. “You choose.”
She knew he wasn’t talking about the cakes. “Which side I’m on, you mean.”
He nodded.
“And which side you’re on?” Chantel asked, because after all he was her familiar. But she immediately felt stupid for saying it. It was quite clear that while he might be her familiar as a small side job, he was something very much more than that in the main.
“No,” said the dragon. “That I know.”
He was watching her closely. She had a feeling she was being tested. She spread her hands on the table and looked at them. There was a dab of pink frosting stuck to one thumb. “Well. The patriarchs want to rule the city. I mean they want to go on ruling the city. If I’m on their side, that means I help them with what they’re doing. Controlling everything, and keeping everyone . . . locked in.”
She looked up at the dragon to see if he agreed with her. He blinked his great golden eyes.
“But it also means I can help the patriarchs repel the Marauders. Sorry. The Sunbiters,” she added, looking at Franklin. “After all, the patriarchs are the ones who command the soldiers.”
The dragon merely waited.
“If I help the king—” she licked the salty frosting off her thumb. “Then I’ll be doing what Miss Ellicott wants me to do, and I ought to do that because I’m grateful for my education and for having a home and not being a servant or a factory girl.”
This gratitude had been urged upon her from the time she was small, of course, and she felt she really ought to be grateful for these things. The problem was that her education, and so forth, were so much a part of her that she found it impossible to be grateful for them. It was like trying to be grateful you were born.
The dragon was still waiting.
“If I help the king, then I’ll be doing my duty,” said Chantel uncertainly.
The dragon nestled his enormous head on a scaly forearm and stared at Chantel and waited.
“I don’t know who I ought to help,” said Chantel. “The truth is I don’t actually like the king or the patriarchs.”
And as for the sorceresses—Chantel felt suddenly as if she might cry. She pressed her lips together hard. Franklin was watching her intently, and so was the dragon.
“I . . . can’t I just be on the city’s side?” she asked.
Lightning smiled, and flames deep inside reflected off his long white fangs. “Yes.”
He yawned hugely, ending in a ROWRR that shook the cups on the table. “Sleep now.”
“But—” Chantel said, dismayed. She wanted to go home. She wanted to make sure the girls and Bowser were all right.