Dragon’s Empire – 3. Countess and Dragon

«Thanks!» said Vincent. «You turned out to be more hospitable as the countess, she never even invited me to spend the night. If you already help her to return to the castle, then tomorrow we can put a visit to her, have a heart-to-hear talk with her. What would you do not decide, I will accept your side… so, from a sense of duty.»

«The countess!» I repeated tiredly, I threw the curls from the forehead, they were still wet from rain and snow. What did I do with the countess? I left her in some cave, alone with those who settled there before me.

«Edwin, are you not well?» In the voice of Vincent, for the first time, flashed a concern. «But it is impossible? Truth? You are the same as me, eternal and inviolable for death and ailments?»

«Sit here, I’ll come back soon,» I said strictly.

«Where are you going?» Vincent muttered displeased and suspiciously.

«Search misfortunes to my head,» I recalled with a gloomy humor. It was impossible to answer that I was heading to the cave, check whether the countess was still alive or no longer. Already at the very entrance to the cave, I ordered its inhabitant to behave quietly and calmly stepped in the darkness, which was illuminated by radiance of precious stones. Francesca has already woke up and tried in vain to free up her wrist. In vain attempts have not led to anything, except that the countess accidentally noticed the bronze scales of who settled here before me, and was afraid of him.

«You can never wake a sleeping predator, otherwise, when you awaken, his anger will certainly fall on you,» I said. The sounds of my voice hit the walls of the cave, but the echo did not follow them, only the oppressive dead silence.

Francesca turned out so abruptly that the chained wrist jumped involuntarily, and the shackle cut the skin to the blood.

«It is you again!» She just exhaled, either with hatred, or with a contempt, and maybe just with reproach.» I tried to turn away not to see the pale face of Francesca. From the smell of her blood began to torment me. The nails on the hand came up and stretched out, and I hid the hand behind my back. There is no need once again to watch the glitter of gold claws, it is too dazzling even for my own eyes. The flakes on golden claw caused inconvenience, this armor appeared on the wrist only in the case when I don’t avoid killing, but there was no one in the cave except for the countess and a huge reptile. For some incomprehensible reason, I didn’t want longer to kill Francesca, because she was still so young and beautiful.

«If I let you go, do you promise to forget about my existence?»

«Forget?» Francesca stumbled as if the phosphoric light came from my skin blinded her eyes.

«Yes, forget,» I immediately picked up the initiative. «Do not remember more about the picture, about the trip to the castle and even about the estate of Caryatid, I still will not be there soon. I will disappear from someone’s life, as I did it more than once and no longer appear.»

«Of course, you will no longer appear there,» she nodded with an unscrupulous arrogance. «With my silence, you are guaranteed the empty place of the king’s hear.»

It was worth me a lot of work to restrain and not hit her. Francesca sadly laughed.

«Why do you need to sit in the province, near the villages? You would be able to become a pet even by a more powerful king.

«Keep silence!» I ordered strictly.

«Why have I to keep silence? Nobody hears us. There are no royal spies here. And even if there would be someone and conveyed the king about you? It is no use. The monarch wanted to see in you his son and his friend. It would be better if he chose someone from his courtiers to this role, and not a killer and arsonist.»

Without restraining, I threw my hand from behind my back and cut with the claws the shoulder of France. The look of deformed hand shook her before she managed to scream from pain. The necklace was broken, the pearls rolled along the bottom of the cave, the laces were broken, and long red scars from claws stretched on the shoulder. Previously, the executioners branded only fallen women, and I myself, not wanting, stamped the countess. Now these scars will always remind her of what the strength she awakened, touching the portrait.

I cut the chain. Francesca, did not hold on her legs and fell. She tried to push off her palms from the bottom of the cave and climb, but confused in long skirts. The hair fell on her forehead and when she took them into her hand, she saw that I brought a claw for another blow, but this hit did not come over her. The countess screamed and tried to crawl from the a huge ugly snake with fragile dragon wings and a poisonous saliva, fluttered along with blood of dissected throat. Her ankle stuck between the broken and sharp growths of stalagmites, so it could not be released. I had to throw off the shoe and it probably remained forever to lie among the flickering stones and minerals. I did not doubt that now the countess will be go out from the cave and will find the road herself, but still on the way back, knocking at her fortress, I ordered the servants to take the crew and go to meet the countess. Nobody dreamed me to object, my statement was too convinced that her lordship had changed her mind to sail over the see.

Returning home, I found Vincent there. It was clear that he had already found out everything and believed that I behaved me mean, even worse than he himself.

«Go drink something and don’t look at me as if I am a complete villain,» I warned. «You also did not always follow the conscience.»

«Do you mean a granted village?» He immediately became red, quite, as a schoolboy who was guilty. Only he was not ashamed at all, and just afraid of punishment and regretted that he was so quickly caught.

«Was it noble?»

«At least you had the opportunity to fly,» he grunted softly, but I appreciated the justice of comments. If I myself had now decided to attack, then Vincent could not fly or hide or even defend.

«Immediately it is clear that the angry crowd did not attack you.»

«You’re wrong,» Vincent objected, but it was useless to ask him about the troubles of the past, he would still not tell anything. Even now he fell into the sullen, almost partisan silence, fearing unwanted questions.

«Well, if you were the same, it means that we are comrade in misfortune. You can go, console your countess. She now needs only the presence of a poet or a confessor. For whom do you give yourself this time? Maybe even she will confess your doubts to you. And then you will tell me what it is to confess noble ladies,» I pulled my hands to warm them up above the fireplace. I was glad that the hand became beautiful and smooth again. There were no reminders of the scandal and murder that happened in the cave. I violated the law of secret society for the second time, but did not feel guilt. After all, this slippery snake almost attacked me myself, not to mention the frightened Francesca. In addition, I knew that the Camille would not decide again to invade the residence of fairies and to demand justice in all his voice.

«Okay, I will visit all our neighbors to recognize the news?» said Vincent. «By the way, do you not allow me to borrow one of those beautiful hats that are folded in the dressing room. You still got used to walking with a uncoated head, and I don’t like cold.»

«Soon you will begin to claim my castle,» I said as a joke.

«In no case. I hate winter and frost. There is an eternal winter around the castle, it is better to enjoy such a luxury for yourself,» Vincent seriously objected and at the end of the gloomy tirade received the long-awaited permission to choose in the dressing room what he likes.

Before leaving, he was delayed to report:

«All the same, this beauty is too stupid and unbalanced, even if she tried to enlighten someone about our problems, then her statement would be accepted for a book story which she herself had invented.

He marked simply all experienced by us with an expression «problems» – only Vincent was capable of such optimism. He corrected in front of a mirror a hat with magnificent feathers, playfully spent his fingers on plume of the hat and bowed politely, just as after our first conversation in the tower, from which there was no stone for a long time. It was necessary to be more careful, and not to let such an intriguer, like Vincent even on the threshold, but I could not do anything with me. He reminded me of the past, was the only living being on Earth, which I remembered me as I was before my fatal transformation, even before the day, when I first woke up in the dungeon, which became the workshop of the sorcerer.

Of course, I did not want to take a boarder, I have Percy, who was arbitrarily volunteered to help me in all matters. I could not entrust Vincent a single order. So, he simply settled on me with the rights of a poor relative or a classmate. I didn’t know how he wanted to introduce himself to others.

Having decided not to let him down for a long time, I also picked up the first hat, the cloak and went on feet to the castle of the countess. It was necessary to look after Vincent so that he did not make new troubles. After long flights and lightning overcoming spaces, it was pleasant to feel the solid soil under my feet. Probably, just as nice and unusually you went on feet after a long sailing.

Francesca did not have to go far, the coach picked her up almost at the entrance of the cave. Of course, I did not wait for gratitude for my foresight. Most likely, if I decided to visit her openly again, I would run into new reproaches, charges and curses. Fortunately, I did not need directly declare my visit. For a long time, walking on the wide range of cities, I discovered the opportunity quietly to fly to the highest windows and without the knowledge of the owners to follow what they were doing at leisure. This way to apply courtesy visits I really liked. Lightning and silent movements and almost silent breathing did not give out my presence, but I could learn a lot of interesting things, while observing incognito. Only Vincent once managed to calculate that I was followed him, and then thanks to the lost hat, and not his own foresight.

At the foot of the hill at which the count’s fortress rose, I stopped. This dark monolith with a multitude of towers appeared unshakably calm, but inside the warm halls, furnished in the last fashion, reigned real turmoil. The interested servants and maids whispered in the corridors, the last gossip turned out to have all new and very incredible details. The cooks were busy in the kitchen, hoping that the tired, sick mistress at the insistence of the doctor will try at least a broth – this decoction, similar to the soup now prescribed by doctors from all diseases. But the countess refused to eat and drink. Her strange disease could be reduced to the grave and a more stronger man, but Francesca was still full of power. What helped her stay on the feet, melancholy, thirst for revenge or impending madness?

It was unlikely that she could lose the mind from such a smallness as her little adventure in the stormy sea. Looking at the window, I saw that Francesca in a black mourning dress sat in a chair and sorted by fingers an agate rosary. Her face was frozen and impenetrable as a very elegant plaster mask. There were doctors and a priest near her chair. Vincent was in the room too and sometimes inserted his witty replicas into the conversation. Light in the room was very small, and all bright things, even the tapestries are replaced with a more gloomy, an iron binding is inserted into the window: whether to dull the flow of light, or so that no one uninvited to penetrate the fortress through the window. It must be, after seeing the gold scales on the skins of the dragon, even the weakest light hurt the eyes of Francesca. She painfully pushed, looking at the candle. Their in the room was only a few, one in the candlestick on the table and three more in the wall brake. Doctors had to strain all their eyesight to get the necessary bottles of ointments from their aid kits. It was quite difficult to do, without disassembled the labels, such a number of herbs and minerals, crushed into powder, pill, balms and various tinctures were not even by the court doctor, to whom I was somehow advised to contact Florian.

The priest proposed the countess a spiritual assistance and a prayer in blue velvet binding, but she pulled firmly a thick book with the tips of the fingers, as if she was afraid of burning. It is unlikely that someone noticed that she painfully frowned, only I caught the vibration of pain, which the countess felt. Only an hour spent in my castle did their job. Francesca could not force herself to pray. She was afraid of the deserved punishment. My castle was for her exactly a ghost world, where she was allowed only once.

«Rest and decoctions of the doctors will certainly return your health,» Vincent said, he ignored all those present, referring to the countess alone, but she seemed to not notice him and other people who were around her.

Vincent was right. She was very pale, even her bright scarlet lips became pale pink almost white.

«We are so glad that you escaped from the devil, child?» inserted his word the priest. «The very devil who attacked…» He eloquently pointed with his hand in the one way, where the ashes of the burned village were left behind the deaf walls of the castle.

Francesca did not even respond. She looked at one point and did not want to talk to anyone.

«You need to be glad that the Savior appeared on time,» said Vincent, but no one caught a note of irony in his voice. «By the way, you are very lucky that he managed to save you.»