the ground. “Mind what you’re grabbing,” she snapped.
Hallon dropped Lia as though he had clutched a red-hot boulder. Rallon, racing toward his twin, suddenly found a petite girl crumpled at his feet and measured his considerable length over her bowed back, bowling into the group of monks, while the portly one hopped from one foot to the other, screeching like a demented windroc.
Cries surrounded Lia, “Seize her!” “It’s a girl–I swear, that has to be a girl, not a dragonet.” “Thief!” “Unhand my treasures, filth!” “What’s all the excitement about, I ask you?”
Lia made a desperate grab for a toppling plinth, only to have her knuckles rapped by an elderly monk’s cane. The ancient treasure fell and shattered, scattering pieces of jade everywhere. Rallon or Hallon, it hardly mattered which, leaped on her back and set about trussing her like a ralti sheep bound for market. Despite the fact that she did not intend to fight back, Hualiama found him discouragingly excellent at his job. In seconds, he had pinned her arms and secured her wrists between her shoulder blades, finishing off his handiwork with a loop around her neck and a viciously tight knot.
Realising exactly which strip of cloth the young monk had used to tie her up, Hualiama blushed furiously. Mercy! Look somewhere else, anywhere else–ruddy gorgeous monk! One image burned in her mind forever …
“Calm yourself, Master Ja’alkon,” said one of the old ones to the rotund monk, whose face had by now assumed an unhealthy hue.
“Calm myself?” he screamed, swinging his foot wildly at Lia’s neck, only to miss and clatter the man on her back right on the point of the chin. He toppled like a felled tree. “This is sacrilege! Sedition! A riot! Brothers, it is beyond belief–we have a girl on our Island! The Black Dragon himself bellows his outrage. Wretched cur! Slime-dripping spawn of the Cloudlands! You shall be beaten–”
A new, calm voice cut through the hubbub. “Enough.”
Chapter 10: Master Jo’el
SILENCE DESCENDED UPON the squabbling monks as though the new arrival had tossed a Dragon into their midst. An enormously tall, rail-thin monk peered down at Lia, his hands folded into the sleeves of his robes, his ascetic face serene. What betrayed his power were the blue eyes, flashing at Lia like twin blades.
“This pustulent offspring of a windroc …”
The tall monk said, “Master Ja’alkon, please. Try to muster your dignity.”
Ja’alkon folded his arms with an audible sigh. “Master Jo’el, I am merely moved with righteous indignation that this female should appear from nowhere, invade our sanctuary, and–how did you get here, you miniature brigand?”
“Real, lift your brother off her,” directed the tall monk. “Girl, stand up, and–Islands’ sakes! What scanty attire is this? Quick, take my robe.”
Hualiama ducked her head in embarrassment. The monk thrust a robe over her head, which puddled around her ankles in a vivid demonstration of the difference between their respective heights. She wanted to protest about how uncomfortable her trussed hands were, but then it struck her that she knew the tall monk, who had an exceedingly long face with a fantastic beak of a nose that seemed perfect for staring down at diminutive girls and crushing them with a single look.
She essayed a bow curtailed by the throttling strip of loincloth.
“Master Jo’el, I trust you’ve had no more trouble with your Dragonship?”
“Well,” said the Master, eyebrows crawling toward the swirling blue tattoos adorning his pate. His lips seemed to quiver at their corners before he compressed them into a thin line. “Well,” he began again, a stutter-step as he took stock of his captive. “This is most unexpected.”
Ja’alkon made a triumphant crowing noise. “See?”
The blue eyes fixed Lia with unnerving intensity. “Who are you for, girl? Tell me, who are you for?”
“Er …”
“Which King?”
“My father, of course.”
In the stunned silence, Master Ja’alkon could be heard to splutter, “No, she isn’t. No. Is she? No. Couldn’t be.”
Master Jo’el folded his stick-thin arms across his chest. “Masters, I know this girl. She stopped to help me repair my Dragonship on Fa’akkior Island, last year after storm season, as I recall. She jury-rigged my broken sails and patched up a broken stove-pipe. Masters, I have great pleasure in presenting to you the daughter of our one true King, the Princess Hualiama of Fra’anior.”
“That pilfering scoundrel is a Princess?”
To Lia’s astonishment, Master Jo’el’s smile only broadened, crinkling the area around his eyes like old parchment. “And your rightful ruler in our King’s absence, Master Ja’alkon.”