Chapter 35: The dancing Dragons of the Tops

Judging by the amount of splashing, squeezing and squeaking coming from next door, Nahana enjoyed that bath to its fullest; Busy, as Elina predicted, and distracted. This was her chance to sneak up to Brandon before all that talk about keeping her guarded became a reality.

Her attempt ended at the bottom of the staircase when she carefully opened the door and faced the spiky back of a large Metia with bronze tinted scales. He turned around to face her and squared his shoulders. “Please, let me past,” Sylph demanded and stepped past as she talked like Nahana would. But the guard extended his spiked tail and shook his head, causing the chain-mail around his neck to clatter.

Sylph judged her opponent, shifted her back legs for more grip, but played it off with a casual stretch as he noticed. Rushing past was a poor plan. The guard was thrice her size, wearing chain-mail and a male Metia. “Nahana’s orders are to keep you guarded here.” His bored rumble carried all the excitement of a stale piece of bread.

“Really? Right here?” An old technique crossed her mind, simple but very effective. One that gave her precious minutes to relax in Veria’s harsh training lessons. “I gotta go lift my tail quite urgently,” she stated bluntly. Nobody would deny a comparatively small dragoness that request. “I know where the little whelps room is, so if you could let me go real quick? I’ll be right back, I promise.”

The guard sighed a long, drawn-out sigh and answered in a voice so monotone it did not even echo. “I was instructed to keep your right here, no excuses.”

“This is not an excuse, it is an emergency.” The guard sighed once again. He lowered his head to be more on eye-level with her. “I am sorry. I can’t go against her orders.”

“I am asking you to reconsider.” Sylph spread her hind legs comically far apart in the doorway.

“Please, her orders are very clear.” His voice became a little agitated and nervous. “Please wait a few minutes for her to finish.” The situation clearly demanded too much of him, debating her orders with his conscience. “Perhaps you could go wait in the bath, not in the corridor.”

Sylph snorted. “Why? I doubt that helps my situation.”

He gave an awkward quick nod and turned his gaze to Nahana’s bath, begging that she might appear and deal with the situation instead. “If you don’t, Nahana will enter this corridor and-”

“Will face what her orders did.” Sylph locked gazes with the sighing guard as she completed his sentence. A second passed. Two. Three, and Sylph had to wonder if Nahana’s authority was indeed that great and she had committed herself to a degrading act. Backing down now would make her a liar, so she grabbed hold of the center of water in her torso and moved it down her stomach. Might as well make this incident memorable.

“Alright, fine. Follow me. Let’s be quick about it.” Perhaps it had been the sudden loss of tension in her limbs as she relaxed and guided her magic, or that she had closed her eyes to do so that made him reconsider. He hurried up the stairs and Sylph followed, but only half a floor up and into another corridor. It was a dead-end with a door on the side. The guard blocked the stairs. She had expected to leave the cave, not shimmy up a tail length. She thanked the guard and slid through the door with crossed legs.

The door fell closed, and she undid what her ability started by moving the center back. Her plan failed. Why did the guard have to follow? She studied the room for anything that could help. It looked similar to the one in her fuzzy drunk memories, albeit a little less opulent and without the needless fancy mosaics on the walls. She saw little need to draw a river and trees on the back wall when there was an actual stream running through the room. You entered this room out of necessity, not to admire artwork. On a second glance, the rushing water vanished into a drain that looked exactly like in the bath and would surely lead to the same river. She swallowed on a queasy stomach. She could get back to the bath through it, but she was not that desperate and the guard was still in the only way up.

Two minutes of pondering and walking in circles later, hasty scratches hurried through the corridor and Sylph emerged from the bathroom. Nahana flared her wings open in the stairwell, still dripping with water. “Is it that hard to follow a single, simple instruction?” she hissed, and the guard shrunk under her gaze.

She really expected him to keep her in the corridor. Allowing her to freely walk around the palace was one thing, but they moved about ten tail lengths into another one-way corridor.

“I’m sorry, I- I thought, she asked for,” the guard stammered, his monotone voice broken into hurried gasps.

“I give the orders, not her.” Her voice was so cold, the temperature seemed to drop as she leaned over the guard with her teeth bared. Sylph swallowed hard. Nahana looked ready to bite his head clean off. All because he had led her to the bathroom.

“Off with him.” Another guard grabbed the bronze Metia by his wing and pulled. He followed with a pained outcry. After both guards had vanished upstairs, Nahana turned her attention into the corridor like a loaded crossbow being pointed. “Sylph,” her voice grew as icy as her gaze. “Why would you do that?”

Her mother’s voice carried fear, fear that seeped into Sylph starting from her head. She struggled against the artificial emotion while the genuine fear spread freely like a cold spark. But she held her ground despite that. She did not appreciate being hissed at for something this trivial. “Do what? Ask for the bathroom? I am not a whelp.” Sylph straightened herself and raised her head as far as she could, a little above Nahana’s chest. “Your guard had to decide, and he saved the sanctity of your floor.”

Nahana stared for a second, then shook her head and spoke slow and deliberate, a fake tinge of authority to her clear and loud commands: “You are to be the heir to Senbo. My daughter. Whatever you do and say falls back on me. Do not embarrass us like this again. Am I clear?” She blocked the only way out, raised her wings on purpose to take up even more space.

Sylph’s tail fell limp and her focus narrowed. “Embarrass us? Yes, because option number two, or rather number one, would’ve been so much better. You remember how much wine I had last night?”

“Being drunk is never an excuse for misbehavior.”

Sylph scoffed. “I am not drunk, nor am I hungover. You can’t deny that basic bodily needs exist. I am a dragon. I run on water and water runs through me. Next time, I will listen to the guard and thoroughly enjoy dirtying the hallway, seeing how that is apparently the right way to not embarrass us,” Sylph snorted a laugh, but Nahana’s gaze only grew colder.

“You do that, and I will hand you a rag and oversee you scrub the entire bath.” It was not a threat, merely a statement.

Sylph scoffed again, clearly choosing the path of most resistance, but it needed to be said. “So that is not the right thing to do either? You are not leaving many options.”

“You ask me. It is that simple,” Nahana said and turned around. “I should consider that you are not as mature as I thought, seeing how you barely act older than a whelp. Now follow me.”

Sylph stayed seated on the rough stone. “I didn’t come all the way to request permission for basic needs.”

Nahana’s eyes tightened even more as she glimpsed over her shoulder. “Your rights come with experience. If you stop acting immature like this, that is.” A short, pained expression flickered over her face and her voice turned mild, normal, without added emotion. “If you misbehave in front of an important business partner, like the one you barely missed leaving the baths, you could ruin what I built here. Our place in the desert is strong, but depends on keeping up appearances. Our hard work gave us back our freedom, if only a little. How we act as rulers reflects on all of us. Please keep that in mind.”

“Why did you not just tell me that? I did not know that you had an important business partner in the bath.”

“My orders should be clear enough.”

“Evidently not.” In retrospect, it made sense, but the way she framed it did not. What Nahana said in the bath remained in her mind, so who knew if this was true or an elaborate lie? “I get it now, but I won’t ask permission for basic needs.”

Nahana’s face twitched in a tinge of annoyance. “Just how many breaks do you intend to take? You will interrupt nothing important with your antics. I will be around most of the time. When I am not, you may ask the guards. They will keep you from running into anybody that you should not run into. Do not test those limits. I have no patience if it concerns the safety of this town. Am I clear?”

It was not quite what Sylph wanted, but she could live with that agreement for now. “I want to see Brandon.”

“You always demand things, don’t you? Soon. There is something I have to show you first.” Nahana gestured for her to follow and her voice turned sweet and warm again, fake again.

Sylph followed her up the winding stairs. “What’s going to happen to the guard? It was me who got him into trouble.”

Nahana considered an answer in silence. “He disobeyed my direct order, so I will punish him accordingly. It is none of your concern.” The menace in her voice and twitch in her tail had Sylph slowing down a tad. What punishment entailed was left for her to interpret, and her head did not skimp out on the details after recalling his horrified face. “He is not gonna die, is he?” A sudden cold crept up from her tail.

“What? No. As if I would sentence a guard to death like that. Do you know how valuable they are?” She faced Sylph, her eyes a sudden, gentle gaze. “Be harsh, but fair. Killing your own servants will not help our cause and merely divide us like it happened in Prina. You are not a ruler if there is nobody to rule.” The words rang true, no emotion attached. Under whatever face Nahana put on, there was an actual dragoness. One that cared about very certain things. She considered Sylph her heir in the making, and this was a lesson in ruling. “But for now, you are new to this town, so do as you are told.”

Sylph nodded along as they made their way towards a room close to Sylph’s. “I have another question. I have not seen a-” her mind struggled for the right word, “King? Master? Where is my father?”

Nahana let out a snorting laugh, stopping as she realized her question was genuine. Her face returned to a calm smile, and she headed into the room in front of them. It was small, barely large enough to fit Nahana and Sylph without touching. A large mirror filled the back wall between far more wooden boxes and drawers than one could need. “A lot of Aer could be your father. I never bothered learning their name before they left.”

Sylph stopped whatever that imagery entailed and focused on the reflection in front of her. Nahana studied Sylph’s face in the mirror for a second before she turned her attention back to herself. “Your eyes give me a clue.” She nudged Sylph by her horns until their faces were both side-by-side in the large mirror. It was almost scary how similar they looked in shape and expression. Only Sylph’s eyes did not match the piercing green of Nahana’s. “No one knew if we would see the next sunrise. We raided every cask of wine and made quick work of all Smoke in this city. Times were simpler back then.”

Nahana broke out into a snorting, bright and genuine laughter. “I am glad to have you back, little one. We can achieve great things after you have accustomed to this town. You have your father’s eyes, I can say that much. Our tribe, my family, green runs through our lineage like blood through our veins, but yours; I only remember looking down into one pair as keen and blue as yours. Sadly, I can not recall his name and the thought of true freedom dragged him beyond the border.” Her ears flicked forward. “Actually, there was a second pair of bright blue eyes- no, forget that, he had no way of being a father.”

Sylph made a mental note to not ask a question concerning any act or situation that brought about her existence.

“Give me a second.” Nahana spun around to the corner of the room and sifted through a sideboard. Gold jewelry blinked as it sailed through the air and landed on the desk, tossed without regard about the worth of said pieces. Sylph took a second glance around the room, took a slow and deliberate step to the closest cabinet, and carefully pulled on the first drawer with a single digit. Silver pieces glimmered like a mess of stars and she closed it. This room was a walk-in-closet for jewelry. She did not know if she should be impressed, envious, or shocked. Few people in this world had an entire room and mirror committed to jewelry. Veria and Oasis had a small locked drawer for that.

Nahana pulled out a small, rose-gold hornband. Etched into the base were two dragons entangled in a dance, surrounded by music notes. Tiny emeralds were set into their eyes. “It’s beautiful,” Sylph said, fascinated by the shimmer of the polished pinkish metal.

“This belonged to my mother. It depicts the dancing dragons of the tops, a name associated with the tribe our family started generations ago. And now, I gift this to you.” Nahana raised the band and gestured for Sylph to tip her head.

“You’ll gift it to me?” Sylph lowered her head. “This looks expensive.” She had never worn or cared much about jewelry, but the rose-gold band fit perfectly a few inches away from the base of her spiraling horns.

“Its worth goes beyond the material and craftsmanship.” For the fraction of a second, Nahana stumbled over a syllable with a sad sniff. “A mother gives this heirloom to her first daughter once she passed the change. My mother told me about our tradition, as did hers. And I hope you’ll gift it to your daughter in the future. Should you ever meet your father, he might recognize it. I wore it back then until it grew too small. You do not wear a band on the last thirds.” She pointed towards her spiraling horns. Much like Sylphs, they were as long as her head, but the base and middle were far too thick to fit the band. Unaware of such an unspoken jewelry law, Sylph figured it was an Aer tradition too.

“Thank you.” Sylph admired herself in the mirror. The rose-gold was a good fit with the color of her scales and did not look pompous as she had feared.

“I am glad you like it. And now, we shall go see that friend of yours.”