Alice overslept.
She had never overslept in her life. Not in the Solenne yard, where the bell went before the birds. Not in border forts, not in tents, not on the hard floors of inns where the floor was the softest thing on offer. Hester had trained the lie-in out of her at nine. It had not come back.
It came back at three in the morning, with The Pirate Queen’s Revenge.
She had meant to read one chapter. The pirate queen had been in the middle of a sea battle. Then she had been in the middle of a rope. Then, somehow, in the middle of a wedding on a sinking ship, with the candle burned down to a puddle. Alice had closed the book with her heart going very fast. She had lain in the dark thinking about rope ladders. She had fallen asleep with the book on her face.
She woke to full daylight. Full, high, mid-morning daylight, coming flat through the shutter. Somewhere below, Marta was singing.
Alice was in her armour in nine minutes. A record. She did the top buckle on the bedpost on the first try out of sheer terror. She went down the stairs three at a time with her sword in her hand.
“Your horse left,” said Marta.
Alice stopped on the bottom step.
“At the usual time,” Marta went on, wiping a cup. “Walked himself out of the stable, through the yard, out the gate. Didn’t wait.”
“He what?”
“The crowd cheered him off. Habit.” Marta set the cup down. “Pip’s written a verse already. It’s about faithfulness.”
From his stool by the barrels, Pip lifted his lute. He sang it softly, to test it, with his eyes shut:
The hero slept, the hour came, the faithful steed went out alone; he did not wait, he did not stop, he rode to fight the beast on his own. “Last line doesn’t scan,” said Hester, from the corner.
“It’s early,” said Pip. “He’s only been gone two hours. I’ll have it scanning by the time he gets there.”
At the corner table, Hester looked up from her bread. Gideon, beside her, had his mouth open around a piece of sausage. He took it out.
“Horse thieves,” he said. “Alice. It must be horse thieves.”
“It was the horse,” said Marta. “I watched him. He went at a nice steady trot. He looked very sure of himself.”
Alice looked at the open door. At the empty yard. At the road beyond the gate, going away towards the Redcrown, where two hours off a mountain sat in the sun.
“Take mine,” said Gideon, standing. “Take any of the chestnuts. Take Bram’s. Bram won’t mind.”
Bram, at the next table, looked as though he would mind very much.
“Take Grudge,” said Hester.
Everybody in the room went quiet. Grudge was known.
“She needs the air,” said Hester. She went back to her bread.
* * *
Grudge bit her twice before they were out of the yard.
She bit her once getting on, on the knee, through the greave, which ought not to have been possible. She bit her again at the gate, on the boot, while the basket woman watched with interest. She did not trot. She walked, very slowly, the whole way, with her one floppy ear going back and forth. Whenever Alice asked her for more, she stopped dead in the road and considered it.
It took three hours to reach the hollow. Alice spent most of them composing things she would say to her horse.
He was there. Of course he was there.
He was standing in the stream up to his knees, flicking water at the flies with his tail. Beside him, on the flat boulder, sat a woman in a gown of pale straw-gold linen, her feet in the water, her red hair down her back. She was braiding his mane.
She had got about halfway along his neck. The braids were small, tight, very even. Every one of them was tied off at the end with a twist of crimson thread.
Alice reined in. Grudge stopped. Grudge would have stopped anyway.
“You’re late,” said Rakshaza, without looking round.
“My horse left without me.”
“He was on time.” Rakshaza tied off another braid. “He came straight to the stream. Then he stood there looking at the cliff. Then he looked at me. He made it very plain, Hero. You were late. Something had obviously happened. He’d come to report it.”
“Nothing happened. I overslept.”
That made Rakshaza turn round.
“You overslept,” she said slowly. “You.”
“I was reading.” Alice felt her ears begin to go. “Until three.”
“Which book?”
Alice said nothing.
Rakshaza’s face did something very slow, very delighted. “Does she get him up the ladder?”
“I’m not telling you. You’ve got your own copy.”
“I’ve been saving it.” Rakshaza looked at her with enormous satisfaction. “You couldn’t wait. You stayed up till three in the morning with the pirate queen. You let your poor horse ride two hours on his own. Look at him. He’s exhausted.”
Turnip, who had never in his life looked less exhausted, pushed his nose into the dragon’s shoulder for more scratching.
“Turnip,” said Alice.
Turnip’s ear turned towards her, briefly. The rest of him did not.
“Come here.”
He did not come there. He shifted his weight in the stream so that Rakshaza could reach the next bit of mane. He sighed through his nose, a long contented horse sigh.
“He’s my horse,” said Alice.
“He’s a free horse. Rule nine.” Rakshaza tied off another braid. “You wrote it yourself. Well. You shouted it. I wrote it down afterwards.”
Alice looked at the crimson thread. She had seen it before. One single crimson thread, hanging from an embroidery hoop in a dusty corner of the hobby graveyard, with the needle lost somewhere in the hoard.
“That’s from the embroidery.”
“I found the needle,” said Rakshaza, pleased. “Last night. It was in a soup tureen. I was going to start again. Then I thought, no. I’ll do Turnip instead. He sits still. Embroidery never sits still. It’s all knots.”
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* * *
Grudge chose that moment to walk into the stream.
Nobody had asked her to. She simply went, with Alice still on her back, in a series of deliberate splashing steps, until she stood nose to nose with the woman on the boulder. Turnip lifted his head. He moved, quite quickly for him, round behind the boulder.
Then Grudge put her head down. She took the end of the red tail, which was lying along the boulder in the sun, between her yellow teeth. She bit it.
Alice closed her eyes.
There was a short silence.
“She bit me,” said Rakshaza.
Alice opened her eyes. Rakshaza had not moved. She was looking at the old bay mare with an expression Alice had never seen on her. It was something like wonder.
“Nobody has bitten me,” Rakshaza said, “in a thousand years. Something tried in the southern sea. It was the size of a granary. It broke three teeth on my leg. It sulked for a week.” She held out her hand, palm up, to the mare. “What is your name?”
“Grudge.”
“Grudge,” said Rakshaza, with deep respect.
Grudge let go of the tail. She looked at the hand. She did not bite it. After a while she lowered her nose. She breathed on the palm. Her floppy ear came forward.
Behind the boulder, Turnip stamped once in the water, hard enough to splash.
“Oh, no,” said Alice. “No. Absolutely not. I won’t have it.”
“Have what?”
“He’s jealous.”
Rakshaza looked round at the big grey horse. He was staring at Grudge with his ears flat back. He had only ever put his ears back for goats.
“He’s jealous,” Rakshaza said, enchanted. “Of an old mare. On my account.” She rose off the boulder. She waded round to Turnip, put both arms around his great neck, then pressed her cheek to it. “You silly, faithful animal. Nobody could replace you. You brought her to me every day for a year.”
Alice sat very still on Grudge in the middle of the stream.
* * *
Rakshaza remembered the ninth day.
It had been early still, those first days, when the hero rode up every morning to be flicked about the cave like a pea round a plate. Rakshaza had been lying on the ledge in the sun, waiting for the usual small figure in white to come up the cliff. Instead she had found herself looking down at the horse.
He had been tied, that first week, to a pine at the far end of the hollow. Tied tight. Rakshaza understood. Horses did not stay near dragons. Horses screamed at the smell of her from two valleys off.
On the ninth day this one had pulled his knot loose with his teeth.
He had walked across the hollow, steadily, the whole length of it, to the very foot of the cliff. He had looked up at her. Thirty-five metres of red dragon on a ledge a hundred metres above him, smoke going up from her nostrils in the cold.
He had whickered.
Nothing had come towards her in three thousand years. Things went away from her. Armies, ships, herds, birds. They always had. She had grown used to watching backs.
The horse had stood at the bottom of the cliff all day, looking up, ears forward. The next day he had done it again. The hero had stopped tying him after that.
Rakshaza had never told anybody. She had not been sure there was anybody who would understand that a dragon could be undone by a horse.
* * *
“He came to tell you I was late,” said Alice.
They were sitting in the grass by the stream. Grudge was eating thistles nearby with a look of great suspicion. Turnip had his whole head in Rakshaza’s lap, braids and all. He was very nearly asleep.
“He comes to tell me everything.” Rakshaza stroked his nose. “When you’re tired, he comes down the road slower. When you’ve been crying, he stands closer to the cliff. When you’re happy he eats the fence posts. He ate three last week.”
“You talk to my horse.”
“I listen to your horse. It’s different. He’s a very good conversationalist. He never once called me a lizard.”
“I called you a lizard once.”
“Forty-one times.”
“You counted?”
“Hero. You know I counted.”
Alice lay back in the grass. The sky was very blue. She thought of every morning for a year, the weight of plate, the long climb of the road, the gate, the cheering, the place past the bend where her face went out. All that while, under her, a big grey horse had been carrying her to the one place she wanted to go, telling somebody at the top how she was.
“He’s been conspiring,” she said to the sky.
“From the very beginning.” Rakshaza did not even pretend to sound sorry. “He opened the saddlebag too. That was his idea. I’d have been far too polite.”
“You stole my books up a cliff.”
“After he’d opened the bag. One thing leads to another.”
Turnip opened one eye. He looked at Alice. Then he shut it again, as if he had heard enough to be satisfied.
* * *
It was Rakshaza’s idea to take him up.
“No,” said Alice.
“He’s never seen it. A whole year. He’s stood at the bottom looking up every day. He’s never once seen where you go.”
“He’s a horse. Horses don’t go up mountains in dragons’ feet.”
“Why not?”
Alice opened her mouth. There must have been a reason. She could not, at that moment, think of it.
Turnip went up the mountain in the dragon’s hind talons with his legs hanging down, chewing.
He did not struggle. He did not scream. He looked about him with mild interest at the cliff going past, at the hollow dropping away, at Grudge below, who had begun to make a noise like a gate that needed oil. Alice, climbing as fast as she had ever climbed, saw him go over her head. He was still chewing. He seemed, if anything, a little bored.
When she came up onto the ledge, he was standing on it, looking into the tunnel. Rakshaza was beside him, on all fours, very pleased with herself.
“He’s fine,” she said. “He liked it. Didn’t you?”
Turnip walked into the cave.
He walked the whole hundred metres of it. He went past the goblets. He went past the marble king with the gilt pauldron on his head. He sniffed the king, who did not sniff back. He went past the loom with the mended sheep. Then he walked straight into the middle of the swept circle. He stood there, looking round at the hoard, the gold, the great dim roof.
“Not there,” said Rakshaza.
She had followed him in human form. She said it quietly, but quite quickly. Alice, coming up the tunnel behind them, heard it.
Turnip looked at her. Then, with great dignity, he stepped out of the circle. He went to stand on the coins outside it.
Alice stopped where she was, at the edge of the light. She did not say anything. Rakshaza had not seen her yet. She was standing beside the horse with her hand on his neck, looking at the empty swept stone as if somebody might at any moment come along to sit in it.
Then she turned round. She saw Alice. Her ear tips went the colour of the crimson thread.
“He was standing on it,” she said. “It’s very well swept. You can’t have a horse just standing on it.”
“No,” Alice agreed. “You can’t.”
* * *
Turnip found the bed by himself.
He walked round the loom. He walked round the headboard, carefully, the side with the stag that still had both antlers. He looked at the bed, which was the size of a courtyard. He lowered himself onto it, legs folding under him, the way he lay down in the hollow on long afternoons. He let out a groan of pure contentment. Then he went to sleep.
Alice looked at him. Rakshaza looked at him.
“He’s on the bed,” said Alice.
“It’s a very long ride. He’s tired.”
“He was not tired. He walked here at a trot.”
“It’s a very good bed,” said Rakshaza reasonably.
“Nobody’s allowed on that bed but...”
Alice stopped.
Rakshaza turned her head, slowly. “But?”
“Guests.”
“Guests,” said Rakshaza. She seemed to roll the word round her mouth like a sweet. “How many guests have I had, would you say? On that bed.”
Alice did not answer. Her ears answered for her.
Rakshaza stepped closer. She was in the straw-gold linen, barefoot on the coins, with the late light coming down the tunnel behind her. She looked at Alice’s mouth. She leaned in. For one moment Alice thought...
She stopped. A breath away. Rakshaza simply stopped there, the way a hand stops at a door it has not been invited through, her eyes very green, very close.
Alice closed the gap herself.
It was a good kiss. It was going somewhere. It was going, by the feel of it, straight round the headboard. Then from the bed came a loud, wet, rattling horse snore.
They both stopped.
Turnip snored again. One of his crimson braids had come loose. It lay across the pillow like a ribbon.
“Not,” said Alice, “in front of the horse.”
Rakshaza put her forehead on Alice’s breastplate. She made a long, despairing sound against the steel.
“He’s asleep.”
“He’ll know.”
“He’s a horse.”
“He’ll know,” said Alice firmly. “He always knows. He knew in the hollow. He lay down like he’d won a bet.”
* * *
They took him down at sunset, in the hind talons, still chewing on something he had found in the hoard. It turned out to be a lute string.
Grudge had stopped making the gate noise. She was standing at the foot of the cliff where Turnip usually stood, looking up, her floppy ear forward. When Rakshaza came down into the hollow with the big grey horse, Grudge went over to him. She bit him on the neck. Turnip bore it. He seemed to feel he had earned it.
Before they left, Rakshaza went over to the old mare in human form. She plaited Grudge’s forelock, quickly, into one small tight braid. She tied it off with the last of the crimson thread.
Grudge let her. Alice watched it happen with her mouth open.
* * *
Brackenford came out to watch the hero ride home, as it always did. That evening it went very quiet when it saw her.
She was on Turnip, leading Grudge. Turnip’s mane was braided from ears to withers, every braid tied in crimson. One of them had come undone and been retied, slightly crooked. Grudge walked behind with a crimson braid in her forelock. She was not biting anyone.
“The beast,” said Dobbs at last, “braided your horse.”
“I braided my horse,” said Alice.
“In the lair?”
“It’s a long day.”
Gideon came out of the Lance with a napkin still tucked in his collar. He looked at Turnip. He looked at Grudge. His eyes went very wide.
“Alice. Alice, did it...?”
“No.”
Hester came out behind him. She did not look at Turnip at all. She went straight to her mare. She stood looking at the small crimson braid in the old bay forelock for a long time.
“Who did this?” she said.
“Grudge let somebody,” said Alice.
“Nobody’s touched that forelock in twenty years.” Hester put out a hand. Grudge leaned her whole face into it, eyes half shut, like a much younger horse. Hester stood there, rubbing the white blaze, looking up past the roofs at the Redcrown going dark against the last of the light.
“Hm,” said Hester.
Gideon edged closer. He reached out, very slowly, very carefully, towards Grudge’s gleaming neck, the way a man might reach for a sleeping bear.
“She’s lovely now,” he said softly. “She’s gentle. Look at her. Whatever happened up there, it’s changed her...”
Grudge bit him on the elbow.
“Not that much,” said Hester.