“Very well,” Prince Marek said at once, even though he was talking through his clenched teeth: a rehearsed answer. They had worked it out between them, I realized in dawning outrage.

Then the Falcon added, “And you in turn must realize, Sarkan, that Prince Marek cannot possibly let you just keep Queen Hanna and your peasant girl here.” He gestured to Kasia, standing beside me. “Of course they must both go to the capital, at once, and face their trial for corruption.”

“A clever piece of maneuvering,” the Dragon said to me afterwards, “and an effective one. He’s right: I don’t have the right to abandon the valley without the king’s leave, and by the law, strictly speaking, they must both stand trial.”

“But it doesn’t have to be this instant!” I said. I darted a look at the queen, sitting listless and silent in the wagon while the villagers piled too many supplies and blankets in around her, more than we would have needed if we’d been going to the capital and back again three times without a stop. “What if we just took her back to the tower, now—her and Kasia? Surely the king would understand—”

The Dragon snorted. “The king’s a reasonable man. He wouldn’t have minded in the least if I’d discreetly whisked away the queen for a convalescence out of anyone’s sight, before anyone had seen her or even knew for certain that she was rescued. But now?” He waved an arm at the villagers. Everyone had gathered in a loose ring near the wagon, at a safe distance, to stare at the queen and whisper bits of the story to each other. “No. He would object greatly to my openly defying the law of the realm before witnesses.”

Then he looked at me and said, “And I can’t go, either. The king might allow it, but not the Wood.”

I stared back at him, hollow. “I can’t let them just take Kasia,” I said, half a plea. I knew this was where I belonged, where I was needed, but to let them drag Kasia off to the capital for this trial, where the law said they might put her to death—and I didn’t trust Prince Marek at all, except to do whatever suited him best.

“I know,” the Dragon said. “It’s just as well. We can’t strike another blow against the Wood without soldiers, and a great number of them. And you’re going to have to get them from the king. Whatever he says, Marek isn’t thinking of anything but the queen, and Solya may not be wicked, but he likes to be too clever for everyone’s good.”

I said finally, a question, “Solya?” The name felt strange on my tongue, moving, like the high shadow of a bird, circling; even as I said it, I felt the brush of a piercing eye.

“It means falcon, in the spell-tongue,” the Dragon said. “They’ll put a name on you, too, before you’re confirmed to the list of wizards. Don’t let them put that off until after the trial; otherwise you won’t have the right to testify. And listen to me: what you’ve done here carries power with it, of a different sort. Don’t let Solya take all the credit, and don’t be shy of using it.”

I had no idea how to carry out any of the instructions he was firing at me: how was I supposed to persuade the king to give us any soldiers? But Marek was already calling for Tomasz and Oleg to mount up, and I didn’t need the Dragon to tell me I was going to have to work it out for myself. I swallowed and nodded instead, and then I said, “Thank you—Sarkan.”

His name tasted of fire and wings, of curling smoke, of subtlety and strength and the rasping whisper of scales. He eyed me and said stiffly, “Don’t land yourself into a boiling-pot, and as difficult as you may find it, try and present a respectable appearance.”

Chapter 17

I didn’t do very well at following his advice.

We were a week and a day riding to the capital, and my horse jerked her head the entire way: step, step, step, and a sudden nervous thrust forward against the bit, pulling my reins and my arms forward, until my neck and my shoulders were hard as stone. I always lagged to the back of our little caravan, and the big iron-bound wagon-wheels kicked up a fine cloud of dust in front of me. My horse added regular sneezing pauses to her gait. Even before we passed Olshanka I was coated in pale grey, sweat clumping the dust into thick brown lines under my fingernails.

The Dragon had written me a letter for the king in the last few minutes we’d had together. It was only a few lines hastily scribbled on cheap paper with thin ink borrowed from the villagers, telling him I was a witch, and asking him for men. But he had folded it over, and cut his thumb with a knife and wiped a little blood across the edge, and then he’d written his name through the smear: Sarkan in strong black letters that smoked at the edges. When I took it out of my skirt pocket and touched the letters with my fingers, the whisper of smoke and beating wings came near. It was a comfort and a frustration at the same time, as every day’s miles took me farther from where I should have been, helping to hold back the Wood.

“Why are you insisting on taking Kasia?” I said to Marek, one last try as we camped the first night at the foot of the mountains, near the shallow eddy of a stream hurrying off to join the Spindle. I could see the Dragon’s tower to the south, lit orange by the last of the sunset. “Take the queen if you insist on it, and let us go back. You’ve seen the Wood, you’ve seen what it is—”

“My father sent me here to deal with Sarkan’s corrupted village girl,” he said. He was sluicing his head and neck down with water. “He’s expecting her, or her head. Which would you prefer I took with me?”

“But he’ll understand about Kasia once he sees the queen,” I said.

Marek shook off the water and raised his head. The queen still sat blank and unmoving in the wagon, staring ahead, as the night closed around her. Kasia was sitting next to her. They were both changed, both strange and straight and unwearied even by a full day of travel; they both shone like polished wood. But Kasia’s head was turned back looking towards Olshanka and the valley, and her mouth and her eyes were worried and alive.

We looked at them together, and then Marek stood up. “The queen’s fate is hers,” he said to me flatly, and walked away. I hit at the water in frustration, then I cupped water and washed my face, rivulets black with dirt running away over my fingers.

“How dreadful for you,” the Falcon said, popping up behind me without warning and making me come spluttering up out of my hands. “To be escorted to Kralia by the prince, acclaimed as a witch and a heroine. What misery!”