one. Lia said, “He never admitted it, because it was neither a happy nor a willing union.”
Shyana searched Hualiama’s eyes, her expression at once so empathetic and affectionate, it evoked tears effortlessly. “Oh, petal. And you believe you’re fated to oppose him? Your own blood-father? My heart weeps terrace lakes.”
At last, she could grieve with one who understood. Lia wept a Cloudlands storm of her own making, thoroughly wetting her mother’s tattered clothing. Such a burden of loss. The pain of the past, translated into the present. The father she had never known, and wanted so desperately to hate. The King and father she did know, who misunderstood and beat her; ungrateful and immovable as an Island. The love of a mother whose arms embraced her now, who would never have given Hualiama up–that was as certain as the suns rising to warm the Island-World. And a fate which drove her beyond what any soul should have to bear.
This was her life’s song.
Blinking away her tears, Hualiama looked beyond her mother’s shoulder, through the crysglass panels to the Dragons. They watched. They knew. Their awesomely sensitive Dragon hearing would have conveyed her tears to dragonet and Dragon just as surely as they would have heard every word of King Chalcion’s rant.
Grandion dipped his muzzle. His voice carried into her mind, I abide with thee, Lia.
* * * *
After four days aboard the Dragonship, Hualiama could bear it no longer. Caged! Trapped in the same endless conversations, the same lies and half-truths, and the conscious and unconscious relegation of a daughter to her ‘rightful’ place. King Chalcion wished to lay his own plans for retaking his throne. Lia paced the tiny cabin she shared with Fyria, her royal sister, who had thankfully commandeered the single bathroom on the vessel to primp or clean herself or whatever she did to while away the hours. She felt like a caged rajal. Father had made the navigation cabin his own, denying Lia even the pleasure of flying the vessel without his judgmental gaze burning into her shoulders.
If something did not give, she’d explode.
The night was advanced enough that snores gentle and stertorous filled the Dragonship and its cabins, from the tiny private cabins, barely bigger than a closet, to the main cargo hold, overflowing with the sick from the mine. Fifty-three souls in all.
Lia padded to the navigation cabin where Elki was taking his spell at the controls. “Hey, monkey mischief,” she greeted him.
“Hey, short shrift. Couldn’t sleep?”
“Aye. Elki, if I disappeared for a bit, could you and Mom cover for me? I’ll rejoin you either here or at Sa’athior Island.”
“Disappear?” Elki’s normally roguish grin flattened out into a grim white line when he realised what she implied. “You’re not … you aren’t–sister, please don’t tell me …”
Lia raised a finger to his lips. “Shh. Don’t ask. Then you won’t have to tell a lie.”
“Heavens above and Islands below! There never was a Dragonship you ditched near the mine, was there?” He glared out of the window, clearly fighting for calm. He pleaded, “Tell me you’re planning to walk on the clouds to Fra’anior Cluster.”
“Precisely.” She smiled tremulously at her tall, slender brother. “It’s a kind of magic.”
“Magic it is. Good thing you taught me how to pilot a Dragonship, eh? You scamp. You have them all convinced I’m the naughty one, meantime …” Elki’s breath hissed between his teeth. “You do realise how hard this is for a brother? I’m sort of fond of the living, breathing version of Hualiama.”
“Dear one,” she stood on her tiptoes to kiss his bearded cheek, “If the Dragons find out where I’ve been and what I’ve done, I’m already as good as dead. Choice is immaterial. Ra’aba threw me off close enough to Ha’athior Island that Flicker could pull me into a tree. I set foot upon Ha’athiorian soil. Lived there, Islands’ sakes. How is this any different?”
Somehow, it was. His aghast response conveyed the truth. Even if the penalty was the same, a simple trespass felt less of an abomination than what she had done. Yet, how could she change the past? Oaths bound her soul more surely than chains, and her instincts about the Tourmaline Dragon, a hundred times more forcefully yet.
With that, Lia stepped back, her forefinger pressed to her lips. Elki nodded grimly. Judging from his expression, her brother must have been tempted to raise the alarm, to spring upon her and beat her back from her course … yet he did not,