Twenty-four days went by the way days go when somebody is happy and refuses to admit it.
Alice rode up the Redcrown every morning. She rode down every evening, more or less before dark. The town cheered her out. The town cheered her back. Pip wrote eleven new verses, two of which scanned. Hester drilled Gideon’s company in the Lance yard at the second bell until Gideon stopped leading with his chin, then started leading with his forehead instead, which Hester said was progress of a kind. Valour the goat grew a hand’s width, ate a saddle, then slept every night in the stable on a pile of straw beside a knight in rabbit slippers.
The ninth pauldron stopped squeaking. Alice missed it slightly.
The chapbook man came back to the well on market day. Alice dropped a penny, checked her girth, then rode up the mountain with The Pirate Queen’s Return under her breastplate. The pirate queen got a baby by chapter four. Rakshaza was appalled. She read it twice.
On the ninth day, Alice went behind the headboard to hang up a gauntlet with a crushed thumb. She found a second row of spearheads driven into the stone below the first. She counted them without meaning to. Twelve. Bright, new, very straight.
She did not say anything. Neither did Rakshaza. Later, though, sitting in the circle eating an apple, Alice caught herself smiling at nothing. The dragon caught her at it. The dragon’s tail went round in a slow, satisfied curl, as if it had won a bet against someone it liked.
Then it was the last night of summer.
* * *
Brackenford did the Lantern Fair the way it did everything: all at once, at full volume, with too much food.
By the third bell the square was strung from roof to roof with ropes of unlit paper lanterns, red, gold, blue, hundreds of them, swinging in the warm wind. There were stalls down both sides of the high street. There were roast chestnuts, honey cakes, sausages the length of a forearm, a man with a bear made of straw, a ring-toss, a strong-man’s bell on a pole, a woman telling fortunes from the bottoms of cider cups. Players had come over from the next valley with a painted cart. Every child in town had a paper crown.
Alice had come down from the mountain at four. She had taken her armour off. She had put on the blue Crown parade tunic she wore for kings, then the duchess’s cloak over it, then stood in front of her small mirror for some time wondering who that was.
“You look nice,” said Marta, on the stairs, in the voice of someone stating the weather.
“I look like a hero at a fair.”
“You look like a girl at a fair. Different thing. Go on. Your friend’s here.”
* * *
Lady Shaza of the Coast had arrived on foot from the east road at the fourth bell. She had not hidden one single thing.
Her gown was midnight-blue silk with silver thread worked through it so finely that it looked as if the first stars had come out early on her. Her hair was loose to her waist. Her horns had been polished until the lantern light ran down them. The red scales lay along both cheekbones, down the side of her throat, across the backs of her hands, bright as new enamel. Her tail came out through a slit in the gown, its golden fan swaying behind her at about the height of everybody’s knees.
People stared. Children followed her. A boy asked if the tail was real. She let him hold the end of it. He went pale with joy.
When she saw Alice coming across the square in the blue tunic, without armour, without a sword, she stopped in the middle of the street. Something went over her face that she had not had time to arrange.
“Hero,” she said, very quietly, as Alice came up. Then, at a normal volume, for the people round them: “Dame Alice. What a coincidence.”
“I promised,” said Alice. She meant: I said I would never ask you to hide anything. She meant: look how many people are looking at you.
Rakshaza understood her perfectly. Her ear tips went the colour of the lanterns.
“You did,” she said. “Buy me a honey cake.”
* * *
They did the fair.
It turned out that Rakshaza cheated at everything.
At the ring-toss, the rings went over the pegs every time, because a golden tail fan moved very slightly behind the stall each time she threw. The stall keeper, who had never lost so much in his life, gave her a stuffed cloth dragon with four legs and dog’s ears. She held it at arm’s length for a long moment with an expression of profound personal grief. Then she gave it to the boy who had held her tail.
At the cider-cup fortunes, the old woman peered into her cup, went white, then said she saw nothing at all, nothing, nothing, nothing, refunded her penny, then shut up her stall for the night.
At the guessing jar, where you paid a copper to guess the number of dried beans inside, she looked at it for a long moment. Then she said, “Four thousand, one hundred, eleven,” then, “No. Twelve. One’s hiding under the lid.”
The man counted. It took him an hour. It was four thousand, one hundred, twelve.
“How?” Alice said, eating the honey cake Rakshaza had made her buy for herself.
“I’ve been counting things for three thousand years. Coins mostly. Beans are very like coins. Only humbler.”
At the strong-man’s pole, the young smith from the end of the high street swung the great hammer, rang the bell at the top, then turned to the crowd with his arms in the air. People clapped. Someone shouted for the hero to try. Alice shook her head. Too many people were watching. She had spent her whole life not letting people see how strong she was. It frightened them a little. It always had.
Rakshaza looked at her. Then she put a coin in the smith’s hand, took the hammer from him with one hand, then held it out to Alice by the head.
“Go on, Hero,” she said. “I’d like to see.”
Alice looked at the hammer. She looked at the people. She looked at the one face in the whole town that had never once been afraid of her strength.
She took the hammer. She hit the pad.
The weight went up the pole like a startled bird. It hit the bell so hard the bell came off. It flew over the roof of the bakery, out of sight. Somewhere on the far side there was a clang, a crash, a cat, then the sound of a pig expressing an opinion.
There was a silence. Then the square roared.
The smith stared at his empty pole. “Never,” he said. “Never in my life.”
“I’ll pay for the bell,” Alice said, scarlet.
Rakshaza leaned close behind Alice. Her breath was warm in her ear. It smelled of smoke, of honey cake. “That,” she murmured, “was the most attractive thing I have seen in a thousand years. Don’t look at me. Everybody’s looking at you.”
Alice did not look at her. Her ears did enough looking for both of them.
* * *
The herald arrived at sunset.
He came up the Solenne road on a white horse with a trumpet, a tabard of the royal arms, a cold, a look of a man who had been riding since dawn to tell a town something it did not want to hear. He stood in the stirrups in the middle of the square. He blew the trumpet. The fiddles stopped.
“By the word of His Majesty Aldous,” he said, through his nose, “King of Aurelmark, to the Hero of the Realm, at the Lantern Fair of Brackenford.”
The square went quiet. Alice felt Rakshaza go very still beside her. Not the tail. The tail went still, then started moving again, very slowly, a deliberate act of will.
The herald unrolled a scroll.
“His Majesty set a day. That day is today. His Majesty has heard no bells. His Majesty has, however, received the report of Sir Gideon Fairweather, who writes that the beast is beyond the reach of any living soldier, that it has been driven back into its mountain by the Hero, that it keeps boots, goats, cloaks, a pauldron, a king, that it is very possibly literate.”
Several people looked at Gideon. Gideon, standing by a sausage stall with Valour on a string, waved.
“His Majesty is no longer certain what is happening in Brackenford. His Majesty would like to know. His Majesty will therefore come in person, before the first frost, to witness the end of the matter with his own royal eyes. Prepare accordingly. Aldous, King.”
The herald rolled the scroll up. Then, after a moment, he unrolled it again, cleared his throat, then read the bottom line in a slightly different voice.
“Postscript. Does it really keep a king?”
Nobody answered. Pip had his mouth open. Dobbs had his hat off.
Alice stood in the middle of the square, in her parade tunic, with no sword, while the whole town turned to look at her. She did not know what her face was doing. For once in her life she did not have a face ready.
Beside her, in a low, light voice that only she could hear, Rakshaza said, “Let him come.”
“You don’t know Aldous.”
“I knew his great-great-great-grandfather. He had a face like a disappointed fish.” The tail touched the back of Alice’s knee, very briefly, through the cloak. “Before the first frost is weeks away. It’s the Lantern Fair. Buy me a sausage.”
Then, before Alice could stop her, Lady Shaza of the Coast raised her voice so that it carried to the farthest corner of the square.
“Tell His Majesty,” she called to the herald, “that it keeps a marble king. He’s very well. He’s wearing a hat.”
The square laughed. It came out of everyone all at once, the way breath does after you have held it too long. The fiddles started again. The herald, who had a cold, decided to go to the inn.
* * *
They danced after dark.
That was not the plan. There was no plan. But the fiddlers struck up the old turning dance that the whole valley knew, the lanterns were being lit one by one along the ropes, the square filled with couples. Gideon came through the crowd towards Alice, with Valour on his string, in his golden boots, one shoulder still bare in honour of the beast.
“Alice,” he said. He bowed. “Every year, at the King’s spring ball, I’ve asked. Every year you’ve said next year. This isn’t the King’s ball. It’s not spring. I’m asking anyway.”
It was very decent of him. He meant it. He always did.
Alice looked at him. Then she looked past him at Lady Shaza, who was standing by the bakery wall with her arms folded, watching the fiddlers, very carefully not watching this.
Alice had been sent everywhere she had ever been. She had danced at every ball with whoever the Crown had placed next to her. She had never once, in twenty-eight years, crossed a room for somebody.
“Thank you, Gideon,” she said. “I’m dancing with my friend.”
She crossed the square. It was not very far. It felt like the whole of Aurelmark. She stopped in front of the bakery wall. She held out her hand, palm up, the way a hand had been held out to her once on a cave floor.
Rakshaza looked at the hand. Her arms came unfolded very slowly.
“In front of everybody,” she said.
“In front of everybody.”
* * *
Rakshaza did not know the dance. It had been invented about two hundred years ago, while she slept. Alice taught it to her in the middle of the square in the time it took the fiddlers to play the first verse: four steps, the turn, the hand on the waist, the other hand up.
By the second verse Rakshaza was better at it than anyone there. By the third she had begun, very subtly, to improve it. Her tail swung out on the turns like a skirt. People stepped back to watch.
Rakshaza was not watching them.
She was watching Alice, who had crossed a square to her. Who had been asked by a knight in golden boots, in front of the whole town, then had said no, then had come to her. Nobody had sent her. Nobody had placed her. She had looked across a crowd at a woman with horns, with a tail, with scales on her face, then walked over as if it were the easiest thing she had ever done.
It had not been easy. Rakshaza had watched her do it. Her hand had been shaking when she held it out.
There, thought Rakshaza, turning under the lanterns. There it is.
She had wanted to be certain. She had not known what certain would look like. It looked like this: a hero in a blue tunic in the middle of a square, with every person she had ever disappointed watching, choosing.
* * *
She had watched every year since she woke. It was one of the few things worth watching. Just after midnight, the whole of Brackenford came down to the stream below the bridge with paper lanterns. Each one had a wish written on it. They lit them. They set them on the water. Then they stood watching the little lights float away down the valley, hundreds of them, in a long, slow, golden river.
The next morning, the hero had come up the mountain in a filthy mood.
“Did you make a wish, Hero?” Rakshaza had asked, to annoy her. “Was it about me? I do hope it was about me.”
“I didn’t go.”
“You didn’t go to the fair? You’re the only thing they talk about.”
“That’s why.” The hero had drawn her sword. “Every lantern in that stream has a wish on it, Dragon. Every single one of them says the same thing. Let the Hero win. Hundreds of them. Floating away.” She had looked at the hoard, not at Rakshaza. “Nobody needs to see me there. I’m already on all of them.”
Then she had attacked, harder than usual, for a long time.
Rakshaza had not thought about it again for a whole month. Then she had thought about it a great deal.
* * *
At midnight, the town came down to the stream.
The lanterns were handed out on the bridge, each with a little stub of charcoal. Alice took one. She stood for some time on the bank with it, the charcoal in her fingers, the paper blank.
“What do you write?” Rakshaza asked. She had a lantern too. She was holding it at arm’s length, the way she had held the cloth dragon.
“Anything. A wish.”
“For yourself?”
“Usually it’s for the Hero,” said Alice. “Usually, it’s for me.”
Rakshaza looked at her lantern for a long time. Then she turned her back to Alice, wrote something on it in her slanting, treaty hand, then folded the paper inwards so nobody could read it.
Alice turned away too. She wrote four words. She folded hers.
Along the bank, people were lighting their candles from torches. Rakshaza simply bent her head, pursed her lips, then breathed on her wick. It lit at once, a tiny, perfect flame, green at the heart for half a breath before it went gold. Then she took Alice’s lantern from her hands without asking. She lit that one too.
They set them on the water side by side. The stream took them. They turned once, touched, drifted apart, then went off together down the valley among the hundreds of others.
Alice watched them until she could not tell which two were theirs.
When she turned round, Rakshaza was not watching the lanterns. She was looking at Alice.
They were under the willows at the far end of the bank, past the last torch, in the dark. Everyone else was on the bridge. The light from the stream came up gold under both their faces.
Rakshaza lifted her hand. She touched Alice’s cheek with the backs of her scaled fingers, very lightly, as if checking it was warm. Alice did not move. She had learned, these last weeks, to wait. To see whether it would come.
It came.
Rakshaza leaned in. She did not stop a breath away this time. She did not wait at the door. She kissed Alice as if she had decided to, which she had, slowly, completely, with both hands, under the willows, while a thousand small lights went past in the water.
Alice made a sound she had never made in her life. Her hands found the midnight silk. Her knees, which had carried thirty kilos of plate up a mountain every day for a year, briefly forgot their job.
When it ended, neither of them moved far.
“You started it,” Alice said. Her voice did not sound like hers.
“I did.”
“You’ve never started it.”
“I know.” Rakshaza’s forehead rested against hers. Her ear tips were burning. Her tail had wound itself, without permission, round both their ankles. “You crossed a square.”
“It wasn’t very far.”
“It was the whole of Aurelmark,” said Rakshaza. “I watched.”
Alice laughed, shakily, against her mouth.
* * *
On the bridge above them, Sir Gideon Fairweather stood very still with an unlit lantern in one hand and a goat on a string in the other.
He had come looking for the goat. The goat had come looking for the willows. Now Gideon looked down at the dark at the end of the bank, at the gold light coming up off the water. He looked at the woman with the horns. He looked at the hero.
He stood there for some time. His face went through several things. None of them was anything he had ever had to think before.
Valour, meanwhile, considered the lantern in Gideon’s hand. He decided it was a vegetable. He ate it, wish, charcoal, string, all of it, while Gideon stood on the bridge with his mouth open, holding an empty wire frame.
Sir Gideon went to bed that night with a great deal on his mind.
He was not used to it. It took him until morning.