By the end of the first day, Alice knew three things about living with Gideon Fairweather.
He rose before her. She came down the stairs of the Sleeping Lance at dawn to find him already at the bar in full gilded armour, eating eggs, with his hair combed. He waved his fork at her as if they had arranged it.
He offered help with everything. He offered to saddle Turnip. Turnip bit him, gently, as a warning. He offered to carry her helmet. He offered, as she stood in the yard reaching over her own shoulder for the top strap of her backplate, to buckle it for her.
“No,” said Alice. It came out so sharply that he blinked.
“It’s no trouble.”
“I do it myself.” She hooked the strap over the gatepost, the way she had for years. She leaned into it until the buckle caught. “I always have.”
Which was a lie now. There was one person who buckled that strap. Alice found she would rather walk to the mountain in her shirt than let anybody else do it.
The third thing was that he talked. On the road. In the hollow, where he waited all day with Bram, Wren, Odo, Little Fen, a new shield, an awning against the sun. Every time Alice came out onto the ledge, a golden arm waved at her from below. Every time a roar came out of the cave, a cheer came up after it.
Inside, it had been the strangest duel of the year. They had spent most of it whispering, Rakshaza in human form on the floor by the circle, Alice cross-legged opposite, both of them keeping one ear on the cave mouth like children who had been sent to bed.
“He’s going to be there every day,” Alice had said. “Thirty-three days.”
“I could eat him.”
“You don’t eat people.”
“I could start. He looks like he’d be mostly butter.”
They had laughed into their sleeves. At sunset Rakshaza had roared, Alice had clanged the dented shield, the cheer had come up from the hollow. Alice had ridden home with the man who looked mostly like butter, listening to him describe a fight he had not seen.
That had been the day. It had been a good one, in its way. Alice told herself so all the way through supper.
* * *
Pip had the new verse ready by the evening.
He stood on his stool by the barrels with his lute, which had stayed in tune for six days, a record. The common room was full to the rafters. Gideon sat at Alice’s table with his boots off, because he had no boots. He had borrowed a pair of slippers from Marta. They had rabbits embroidered on the toes.
Pip struck a chord.
“Upon the ledge the beast did rise, / the guild’s bright son between its teeth; / it hung him out above the skies / with all the hollow underneath...”
Gideon put his hand on his heart. Bram, at the next table, nodded solemnly.
“Then came the Hero, calm and slow, / no shout, no fear, no backward glance; / she struck the dragon such a blow / it dropped the golden boy, by chance...”
“By chance?” said Gideon.
“Rhyme,” said Pip, between chords. “Very sorry, sir.”
“...and roaring, wounded, terrible, / it fled back to the mountain’s core. / Two legs she has, and wings for arms, / but never was she struck before!”
The room cheered. Alice cheered too, a little late, because she had been thinking that the dragon would like the last line very much, and that the dragon would also hate fled with a passion that could crack stone.
The door opened.
A cold breath of evening came in, smelling of the road. Every head turned. A woman stood in the doorway in a gown of deep plum, with a hood at her shoulders she had not bothered to put up. Her hair poured down her back like something poured from a furnace. Two black horns curved back from her temples. Behind her, a red tail swept the step.
She was barefoot. She was carrying a large, lumpy sack over one shoulder, which clinked.
“Lady Shaza!” cried Pip.
“Good evening.” The voice was low, amused, elegant, every word set down like a cup on a saucer. “I heard there was a new verse.”
Alice did not move. She could not. Every part of her body that knew how to fight was standing to attention. Every part that knew anything else had gone completely still.
She said she’d leave a note. She said before going anywhere.
She never said where she’d leave it.
Rakshaza crossed the room. People made way for her the way water makes way for a ship. She set the sack down on Alice’s table with a heavy, satisfied clank.
“I found these,” she said, “on the mountain road.”
Gideon looked at the sack. He reached in. He drew out, very slowly, a scuffed brown boot that might have been Bram’s. Its laces were knotted to a small grey one, which was knotted in turn to a tall one. Six boots came out of the sack in one piece, swinging, like a terrible bunch of grapes.
Gideon looked into the empty sack. “Where are mine?”
“Those weren’t on the road, I’m afraid,” said Rakshaza.
“On the road?” said Wren, from the next table, narrowly.
“Just lying there.” Rakshaza sat down in the empty chair beside Alice without being asked. “I expect the beast lost interest in them.”
“The beast,” said Gideon, “doesn’t lose interest. It keeps things. Everyone knows that.” “It kept mine.” He said it with wonder, not regret. “It dropped the others in its flight. It means the Hero hurt it so badly that it...”
He looked up. He looked at Rakshaza properly for the first time.
Alice saw it happen. She saw his face go through surprise, then interest, then pure delight, the way it did at ogres and weather.
“You’re the friend!” He seized her hand in both of his across the table. “From the school! Gideon Fairweather. I’ve so wanted to meet you. Alice said you were in an earlier year.”
“Considerably earlier,” said Rakshaza.
“I’d remember horns. I said so.” He beamed at them. “Are they real? May I...? No, that’s rude. Are they heavy? Do they ache in the cold? My aunt had a goat whose horns ached in the cold.”
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“And the tail! Is it... does it do anything? Can you hold things with it?”
The tail rose behind the chair. It took Gideon’s tankard off the table, neatly, from under his nose. It brought it round behind Rakshaza’s back. It set it down in front of Alice.
The room exploded with laughter. Gideon laughed loudest, clapping, delighted. Rakshaza looked sideways at Alice under her lashes. It was the look from the ledge, from the morning with the skulls. Did you see? Did you see what I did?
Alice tried to smile. She could feel it come out crooked.
Because Gideon had stopped laughing first. He was looking at the tail. He was looking at it the way he had looked at the dragon on the ledge, with his head a little on one side.
“It’s red,” he said. “Scales and everything. Funny.” He looked up at Rakshaza’s face. His smile came back, slower. “You know, you have the same eyes. As the beast. That exact green. I noticed it when it had me in its teeth. I thought, I’ve never seen a green like that in my life.” He laughed again. “And now here it is twice in two days. Isn’t that funny?”
The room laughed with him. It was a joke. Gideon made jokes. Everyone knew he did not mean anything by them.
Rakshaza laughed too, lightly, the way a cat laughs.
Alice did not laugh at all.
She was seeing it the way he might see it, one morning, with his head on one side. The horns. The red. The green eyes. The tail that could hold things. The woman who came out of nowhere the same week the dragon started keeping boots. The man who had hung in those jaws, who had looked into that eye from an arm’s length, who was going to be at her elbow every single day for thirty-three days.
Nobody ever finds out. Rule two. The one under all the others.
She stood up so fast her chair scraped.
“Shaza,” she said. “A word. Outside.”
* * *
The stable yard was dark. A lantern hung over the water trough, making a small circle of light. Turnip put his head out of his stall, saw who it was, and nickered warmly at Rakshaza.
Alice went to the far side of the trough before she turned round. She kept her voice low.
“You can’t do that.”
Rakshaza leaned against the stable door with her arms folded. She still looked pleased with herself. “Do what? Return lost property?”
“Sit there. Like that. In front of him.” Alice heard her own voice climbing. She pushed it down. “He looked at your eyes. He looked at your tail. He hung out of your mouth yesterday, Shaza, he’s not stupid, he’s just slow, and he’s got thirty-three days to get there.”
“He thinks it’s funny.”
“Today he does.”
Something in Rakshaza’s face had begun to change. Alice did not see it. She was looking at the lantern. She was counting the days in her head, the way she counted the steps to her circle. Thirty-three days of Gideon. Thirty-three days of his head on one side.
“So I won’t come to town,” said Rakshaza. “Fine. I’ll sulk on my mountain. I’m told I’m very good at it.”
“No... I mean, yes, but that’s not...” Alice pressed her hands to her face. Then she said the thing that seemed so simple. So practical. The obvious solution to a tactical problem, the kind Hester would have nodded at.
“Can’t you just hide them?”
The yard went very quiet.
“The horns,” Alice went on, because she had started. “The tail. The ears. Just while he’s here. You can look like anyone, can’t you? You could look... you know. Normal. Just a woman from the coast. Nobody would look twice. Then it wouldn’t matter how much he...”
She stopped. She had looked up.
Rakshaza had not moved. Her arms were still folded. Her face was perfectly composed, elegant, still. It was the face she wore on the ledge for strangers. Alice had not seen it turned on herself in months.
The tail behind her was not moving at all.
Alice had known that tail for a year. It lashed when Rakshaza was cross. It curled when she was plotting. It swept in slow, happy arcs when she was teasing, wrapped round her own ankle when she was worried. It had never once in Alice’s life been completely still.
“Normal,” said Rakshaza.
“I didn’t mean...”
“No. You meant it very clearly. It was a very clear sentence.” Her voice was quiet, even, pleasant. There was nothing in it at all. “You’d like me to look like somebody else. So that nobody looks twice.”
“Only for a while. Only so that...”
“So that nobody sees me with you.”
“That isn’t what I said.”
“It’s what you meant, Dame Alice.” The title fell between them like a dropped plate. Rakshaza had never once called her that. “It’s all right. I understand perfectly. I’ve been looked at for three thousand years. I can see when someone would rather I weren’t.”
She unfolded her arms.
For one moment Alice thought she was going to reach out. She didn’t. She straightened her gown at the waist, a small, exact gesture. She pulled the plum hood up over her hair. It sat strangely over the horns. She did not adjust it.
“Your guild’s boots are on your table,” she said. “Most of them.”
“Shaza...”
“Good night.”
She walked out of the yard into the dark road, barefoot, without hurrying. She did not look back. Alice stood by the trough with her hands open at her sides. Turnip stretched his neck as far over the stall door as it would go, watching the hooded figure until the dark took her. Then he turned his head. He looked at Alice for a long time.
The inn door banged open behind her. Light spilled across the yard.
“Alice?” called Gideon cheerfully, in his rabbit slippers. “Is your friend coming back? I wanted to ask her about the coast!”
“No,” said Alice. “She had to go.”
* * *
Marta found her on the back stairs half an hour later, sitting on the fourth step in her shirt, with her boots in her hand. Alice did not remember deciding to sit there.
Marta looked at her. She went away. She came back with a bowl of stew, a heel of bread, a spoon. She put them on the step beside Alice. She sat down on the step below with a grunt, the way a person sits when her knees have opinions.
“Your friend left in a hurry,” Marta said. “Again.”
“She had to go.”
“Mm.” Marta picked a thread off her apron. “Thirty years I’ve had this place, love. I’ve seen a lot of people leave in a hurry. There’s the hurry that comes back through the window. Then there’s the other kind.”
Alice looked at the stew.
“Which was that?” said Marta.
“I asked her for something,” Alice said. “Something sensible. It was only for a month. She took it the wrong way.”
“Did she.”
“She’s very proud.”
“So’s somebody else I could name.” Marta heaved herself up by the banister. “Eat that. Then go to bed. Then tomorrow you can work out which way was the right way to take it.” She paused, two steps up. “You’ve done something stupid, love. I can always tell. You go the colour of a turnip.”
“A turnip?”
“White with a bit of purple at the top.” Marta went on up the stairs. “Eat.”
Alice ate. It was very good stew. She tasted none of it.
* * *
She did not sleep.
She lay on the narrow bed at the top of the inn with the window open. She told herself it was for the air. She lay with her hands folded on her chest, a hero on a tomb, going over it.
It had been a reasonable request. It had been a sensible, tactical request. Rakshaza was proud, everybody knew that, the whole kingdom knew that. She had been asked to change something for a month and she had been dramatic about it. By morning she would be on the ledge, sunning herself. She would be insufferable. Alice would apologise for the tone. That would be the end of it.
The ivy outside the window did not creak once all night.
* * *
Rakshaza walked the eight kilometres to the beech wood without feeling them.
She shifted under the trees, so hard the leaves went flat in a ring. She went up into the dark the long way, away from the town. She flew home over empty hills, low, fast, silent, under the stars. She came down on the ledge onto all four limbs with barely a sound. She walked into her cave on her folded wings like any old beast crawling into any old hole.
She lay down by the loom. Her chin on the floor. The torn tapestry hung beside her, half a sheep.
She could hide them. Of course she could. She had done it before, long ago, in other centuries, when she had been younger and more curious. She had walked through markets in a face nobody turned to look at. She had found it restful for about a week. After that it had felt like wearing somebody else’s skin to a party. She had stopped. She had decided, very firmly, a thousand years ago, that anyone who wanted her company could have it with the horns.
Nobody had wanted it much. That had been all right. She had stopped expecting them to.
Then a girl in white plate had come up her mountain every day for a year.
She remembered the ninth month. A hot afternoon on the ledge, both of them in the sun, Rakshaza in human form with her feet in a dented helmet full of stream water. Alice had been lying on her back with her eyes shut.
Why don’t you hide them? Alice had asked. In this shape. You could, couldn’t you?
Why should I?
Alice had thought about it. She had a way of thinking about things as if they mattered.
No reason, she had said at last. I’d miss the tail. It tells me when you’re lying.
Rakshaza had not said anything. She had lain very still in the sun, with her tail doing exactly what it liked, feeling as if somebody had set a warm hand on the back of her neck.
She had kept that sentence for months. She had taken it out on bad nights to look at. I’d miss the tail.
It turned out you could miss something and still want it put away.
She lay in the dark for a long time. Her ear tips were cold. She found she did not want to fly, or burn anything, or roar. She did not even want to sulk properly. She only wanted, very badly, for the last half hour never to have happened. She had wanted a great many things in three thousand years. She could not remember ever wanting something so useless.
The tally behind the loom caught the starlight from the cave mouth. Five lines. One leaned.
She did not look at it.
After a while, because she could not lie there all night, she shifted again. She went to the bed. Gideon’s golden boots stood beside it, where she had left them that morning after cutting them out of the knot. She had kept them back on purpose. It had seemed very funny at the time.
She paired them. She set them side by side with their toes very straight.
She looked at them for a while.
Then, because she was a dragon of some standing, she got up, fetched two goat skulls from the heap by the ledge, then pushed one, firmly, into each of Gideon’s boots.
She sat back on her heels to admire them.
It did not help in the slightest. She felt very slightly better anyway, which was worse.