The Dragon Kings' Forbidden Witch

It was not elegant. It came up from below, from the cells and the chains and the long cold walk through the corridors with every servant’s eyes upon her, from the night in Thorne’s room and the fever and the awful sudden weight of everything she had been told. She cried into the stained leather of a stable master’s apron like a child, and he held her and did not let go.

”There now,” he said at last, gruffly, rough as gravel. ”There, girl. There.”

”I’m sorry.” Morgana apologized against his shoulder.

”Hush.”

”I....” Her breath hitched. ”I’m sorry, I should have....”

”Hush, now.” Garrick stopped her.

He drew back and held her at arm’s length. His eyes were wet. He did not try to hide it, and she loved him for that. He looked her over in the way he looked over a horse that had come back from a hard ride, shoulders, arms, hands, face. Whatever he saw, it must have satisfied him.

”You’re thin,” he said.

”I’ve been eating.”

”You’re thin,” he repeated, with an unsteady note of the old stubborn gruffness. ”And you’re not sleeping enough. Look at your eyes.”

Morgana laughed wetly.

”Come in,” he said. ”Come into the office. There’s tea. Not good tea, but it’s hot.” He bent and picked up the currycomb and straightened with a faint grunt. Then he turned his head and raised his voice. ”Anyone who wants to keep their position, I suggest you find a reason to be elsewhere for the next quarter hour.”

The yard emptied with remarkable speed.

The head stable’s office was a small square room that smelled of leather and ink and old tobacco. A desk, a stove, a chair with a split seat. A shelf of ledgers. A cracked clay mug on a hook by the window. Morgana had sat here a hundred times on cold evenings, with her feet against the stove, and listened to him talk about breeding lines and bad hocks.

He pressed her into the chair and went to the stove. He busied himself with a kettle for some time without turning around.

”I thought you were dead,” he said.

Morgana looked up.

”Not truly. Not at first.” The kettle clinked. ”I knew they’d have to try you. I knew what the penalty was. But when Calla’s men took you out of that yard in chains, and I stood there with my mouth open like a landed fish while that woman told me I’d hang beside you if I took another step....” His voice stopped. It started again, lower. ”I thought, that’s it, then. That’s the last of her. And I went back into my office and sat down at that desk, and I didn’t get up till evening.”

”Garrick.....”

”Let me finish.” He still had not turned. ”I’ve been a horseman forty years. I’ve buried a good many. I’ve stood in front of bad men and told them no and meant it. And I stood in that yard and watched a girl I’d have loved like my own daughter if I’d had the sense to have one get dragged off for a thing she didn’t do, and I said nothing.”

The kettle began to sing. He did not move it.

”I knew,” he said. ”Do you understand? I knew you hadn’t done it. You couldn’t steal a button. You came into my yard half starved and asked me what the horse’s name was before you asked what your wages would be. I knew. And Calla said silent, and I was.”

”You’d have been arrested.” Morgana said.

”Aye. I would.”

”They’d have taken you, too. They’d have said you helped me. Garrick, it would have done nothing, it would only have meant two of us in the cells instead of one.”

”I know that.” He turned around at last. His face was ravaged, the brown skin gone grey under it. ”I know it. I’ve told myself the same every night since. Doesn’t help.”

Morgana stood up.

She crossed the little room and put both hands against the front of his apron, and she looked up at him until he met her eyes.

”You gave me a room,” she said.

His jaw worked.

”I came to this yard with nothing. No one in the palace would speak to me. The stable hands wouldn’t look at me. Rowan was the only friend I had, and she was on the other side of the grounds.” She held his gaze. ”You gave me a room of my own. You covered for me when I was ill. You gave me the easy mares when my hands were bleeding. You never asked me one question I didn’t want to answer.”

”That’s not.....”

”You never once looked at me as though I was wrong. Do you know what that is, in a place like that? Do you know what it is to be looked at by someone who thinks you are simply a person?”

His eyes had filled again. He blinked hard.

”I should have said something. I should have shouted the whole palace down.”

”And you’d have been in the cell next to mine.” She squeezed the leather. ”I wouldn’t have wanted that. Not for all the world. I’d have rather had you out here, doing what you do, with a stall for me to come back to.” She smiled, small and crooked. ”Which I have.”

He made a sound that was half a laugh and half something else. He put one callused hand over hers and held it flat against his chest, and she could feel his heart going.

”The girl in the kitchen,” he said hoarsely. ”The old woman. Agnes. I asked her every week. Sent the boy with a message. She’d say, she’s well, Master Garrick. Never more. I didn’t know if I believed her.”

”She told me.”

”Is it true? Are you well?”

Morgana opened her mouth.

Well. She had been burning with fever twelve hours ago. She had a bruise on her shoulder in the shape of a man’s teeth. She had stood in a cold pool and been taken apart by a dragon who looked at her as though she were something he had always longed for.