Dragon’s Empire – 3. Countess and Dragon

Translator Natalie Lilienthal

© Natalie Yacobson, 2021

© Natalie Lilienthal, translation, 2021

ISBN 978-5-0055-8641-4 (т. 3)

ISBN 978-5-0055-4050-8

Created with Ridero smart publishing system

Exposure

The countess was not too worried after the owner of the mysterious castle tactfully and kindly in the midst of the night pointed her a door. So it seemed to me when I looked into the castle’s window and saw her in a circle of fans. Elegant and beautiful, she flirted at once with everyone and did not even suspect that the Golden Shadow is watching her from the darkness of non-existence. And maybe she suspected. In any case, for one long moment her eyes rushed to the window. She did not see anything other than a snowfall behind the illuminated glass. Did she notice a golden, winged snake that had clung with all its slippery body to the stone wall?

The countess with a crash folded the fan and hit them on the knuckles of their fingers, so the skin turned red. She could not have to pinch herself to check if her sudden imagination was true. She miraculously managed to feel that there is a golden something firmly connected with the restless soul of her dark idol behind the window. If it were not for a noisy company, and not questions that flew on her from all sides, Francesca would undoubtedly rushed to the window to test their assumptions or again to let the spirit into the house. That is how she first called me – a light touch to the picture on canvas. Now she tried to establish a mental contact with me, but inexperienced in witchcraft, she did not know how to fasten the subtle binding threads of strangers.

«Did you cut yourself?» said excitedly someone from the guests, turning towards her.

Francesca really squeezed the fan too strong, the ostrich feathers were broken, and the revealed needles scratched her on the nameless finger. She did not even feel pain, but I breathe in air even at such a distance the aroma of her blood. So you inhale the smell of expensive wine before you enjoy a thin bouquet of taste. This feeling made me look again through the glass to determine whether it was on the finger of Francesca that amethyst ring, which Rothbert tried to intimidate me. It was not an amethyst. The most attractive magnet was in the fortress – the picture. I needed only this magnificent canvas, but since Francesca felt my presence this evening, I had to fly away.

The estate met me with the usual panorama of the majestic launch. The snow was spinning over the frontons, covered the balconies. Snow flakes melted, touching marble caryatid. The rooms of the palace, intense and cold, did not welcome the owner. Only in one fireplace in the ash, dry branches were preserved, as if someone recently was here. There was neither the time nor the desire to bypass with the ward all the premises from the attic to the basements to discover the tramp who could look for the shelter from the snowfall. Even if someone snuck through the window, it will soon be afraid of the arrival of legal owners and will run away.

Having visited the mill to the next morning, I even found there two shy peasants: a miller and his assistant, who swore, that they used to worked here and asked me as a new owner, allow them to take up former duties again. I decided to allow them to grind the grain of neighboring farmers, because it’s not to stand without a mill, but put forward one prerequisite. Having finished their day work, in the evening they should leave the mill to their home and not to return to the dawn itself. Of course, such a whim could seem strange, but such a contract guaranteed security to people. With the onset of darkness, my subjects could frighten them too much. Taking advantage of the fact that two men are in the evening alone on the lands of their sovereign the evil spirits could attack them, pushed, and pester until the unfortunate drown in the nearest mill pond.

The imperative tone, which was put forward by the condition, became a guarantee of its observance. I myself examined the mill. There was nothing unusual to the room, not a single hint that this place belongs to evil. Of course, two mercenaries could dissolve rumors about the oddities of their new owner, but I didn’t care. I wanted the mill to earn again to rotate the wheel of the wind in former times. Maybe then something unusual will happen here.

I secretly watched the Countess when she ordered to collect a road chest and prepare the carriage. It seemed to me that in the capital she would not only entail the desire to acquire new books, because she could send someone from servants. The first impression could not deceive me. Francesca was too nervous when she sat down in the carriage. The entire way Francesca could not calm down. I corrected the warm raincoat with a white fox. At the entrance to the lively wide road, she put on the face a dark half mask, as if she did not want that her friends could know her by chance met in the way.

On the streets of the capital I had to abide by the double caution and slide behind the crew as an invisible shadow. On too narrow stone streets, each passerby was well noticeable. Of course, the old king invited me to go to the palace at any suitable time, but after a frank conversation in a hunting house, I did not decrease to put a visit to him again.

The crew went along the stone bridge, drove on one of the main streets and stopped in front of the facade of a well-known home. It was there, on the second floor behind a draped window, I with Vincent recently played cards. Here I first felt the hand of the countess, touching the portrait.

Francesca slipped out of the crew. Francesca reached the door hammer, made in the form of an eagle head. The door almost immediately opened. On the threshold rose an servant.

«Conduct me to the baronet and prepare the card,» said Francesca with a clear pure voice. Under the lace, the veil descended from the half mask was impossible to consider even how her lips move, pronouncing words. The forehead, cheekbones and nose were completely closed, only her eyes sparkled from the slots. The servant objected.

«The one you are looking for, does not live here anymore. The house is recently sold.»

«Where can I find the former owner? Speak, do not be shy, I’m not an enemy.»

«Sorry, milady, but I don’t know anything.»

Francesca shuddered a little when the door slammed before her.

«Unpleasant, of course, my darling, but you are not the first who paid him forward,» shouted after Francesca, a man, who appeared for a long time under the windows of the same house. «It seems that our omniscient predictor is not going to return debts to anyone.»

Francesca did not even pay attention to the insolence, and the one, tapping some melody with his cane on the pavement, also continued to look at the unlit windows of the facade. The darkness over the streets thickened. The countess returned to the carriage and order to the coachman to go through hers favorite route, that is, to the bookshops. I followed her when she moved books in leather bindings behind glass shop windows and for a long time asked the seller. She was satisfied with books standing on the shelves. Then the old merchant with wrinkled hands and face, as if he remembered something, took a lantern and went in search in a storage room, returned and handed her the book in the dark as a fragment of the night, binding. The lady eagerly grabbed it, immediately paid, while not taking off the mask nor gloves.

Approaching the showcase, I could hear the fragments of the conversation.

«Go to the tavern» Crown and Eagle», he happens every evening there,» said the merchant, wiping about the apron, the hands smeared with glue and wax. The light of a single lamp laid in orange shine on a closely pressed bookshelves and a ladder, leaning towards the highest cabinet.

«Are you sure that he is not madman?» Francesca masked with an arrogant tone her interest.

«In the days of his youth, he was a robber in Roshen. I knew him well, milady and tried to return him on the right path. But the person who set foot on the vice path can return to honest life only by surviving a real chilling blood horror.»

«Briefly speaking! Do not say as the novelist! I only need facts,» Francesca demanded, adding a coin to pay.

«Then ask him about everything, he will advise you.»

«Is it really?»

«He is ready to talk about it with everyone, but rarely who believes.»

«And what is the connection between the book and the stories of this… unhappy man?» asked Francesca.

«Many books are based on the truth,» the merchant mysteriously answered, «but sometimes only one story, moreover, written so long ago, cannot end the existence of his heroes,» he again crossed his grilling apron and added in a completely different tone. «In the „Crown and Eagle“ you will find at the same time good rooms for overnight.»

«Thanks!» Francesca nodded coldly and went out into the street. When the carriage again was on the road, I stubbornly continued my surveillance.

This time the crew stopped at the building with an elegant sign. While I stayed on the street, the countess boldly went in the institution, ordered the rooms for the night and looked around. At the table with a mug of beer was sitting an elderly man like the most ordinary appearance and physique, but in his unreleased look, something testifies of the memories who can deprive the mind of even the hardening criminal. I have never seen this person before, but, appreciating the muscles in his arms, I could say that he was not bad with a knife and often used it not for the most noble goals, he could strangle someone in the darkness. Of course, I was struck by the fact that the sophisticated Francesca fearlessly headed for such a subject and started the conversation, whose echoes were reaching me.

«What did that stranger looked like who killed your comrades? I want to know!» She demanded.

«So you believe me?» The man looked at her. His hand holding a mug of beer froze a halfway from his mouth.

«Suppose I have reasons to believe,» she nodded.

«You asked how he looked,» her companion whispered. «Yes, since then many years have passed, but I still remember. Such a beautiful arrogant face, I saw him only in the profile, but I could not forget. It was expensive clothes, a velvet raincoat, and something like silhouettes of the dragon embroidered on the camisole. I then thought that he himself was the devil, because there was no wonder that if an evil spirit tempts someone, it becomes very handsome. He so coolly killed my partners… Imagine, Madam, he revealed both the throat with such ease, as if he had to do this not for the first time. After that night I went gray. Not every time you have to see how your friends are separated, as if meat carcasses.»

«Would you be able to find out this young man if you saw him again?» In the voice of Frances, insidious notes sounded.

«God forbid,» the tavern’s frequenter slightly crossed himself, but he was afraid to show himself a coward in the eyes of such proud and undoubtedly noble lady. «His image and so still stands before your eyes. It is only worth covering eyelids, as he is here again in front of me, deadly pale, beautiful, gold-haired and the same young as many years ago. So now it seemed to me that he flashed in the window. Do you believe me?»

Francesca turned to the window but, of course, did not notice anyone.

«So he was very beautiful, pale and gold-haired. Is that all you remember?» She calmly asked. He looked at her as the drowning on his savior and continued feverishly to recall.

«It was dark. In Roshen’s slums there were no lanterns, but his skin was glowed by itself and the hair was also shone like the sun. And he also had a golden claw instead of one hand. You see, such a paw with long sharp claws. She finished off my friends. Did an erased hand not evidence that he is a devil?»

«In fact,» Francesca nodded and throwing a coin on the table offered. «Order something strong to drink. It is not necessary to talk so often about the gold-haired devil, and he really can hear you and return.»

With these words, she turned around and called the owner of the tavern, so that he spent her upstairs, in apartments. The long raincoat have retired on a narrow wooden staircase like a train.

He could also take the lady in the road raincoat and mask for the devil, if it were not for a ringing coin, after her left-handed on the table.

Now I also remembered this person. That night, when robbers attacked me, he was hiding around the corner, waiting for the injury of prey. Then, I didn’t even turn, but I felt behind the presence of a third gangster with a knife, pressed against the wall behind my back. It turns out he managed to consider me and remember. And here, even if I looked at him now I could not know him, because so many years passed. The face that was old, the forehead cut the wrinkles, and under the eyes climbed dark circles. Even if he drank less, no one would believe in such a crazy story about the gold-haired demon, who boldly walks on the backyards of Roshen and manages a bloody trial over the robber. I could enter the warm, weakly lit by the lamps tavern, and make a random witness silence forever, but did not want. After all, he was not a dangerous accusatory in front of me, but only the unfortunate, who, once saw a supernatural being, is now trying to convince unbelievers in his right and slowly, but correctly acquires a reputation of madman.

I flew up to the window. Behind a small glazed window was clearly visible, a newly recently cleaned bedroom. The book seller was right, such clean rooms are far from all the innovations. Francesca rubbed with a towel a mirror on the dressing table and combed her long bright curls. They covered her shoulders and her back, and were too naughty, to make the countess herself without the help of the maid managed to lay them into the hairstyle. She managed to change the road outfit for the long lace shirt. Mask, dress, raincoat, as well as many hairpins were scattered on the couch. Her lordship is not used to do without servants. Only the most valuable acquisition – a black binding book was neatly put on the bed over a quilted blanket.

What is such an extraordinary concluded in the printed text on the stitched sheets? Why did Francesca search, almost demand that the seller found exactly this book? Maybe in all its unhealthy hobbies of mysticism lies something more than simple interest. I watched Francesca put the ridge on the table, and the contents of a small lady’s handbag were poured nearby. Jewels, bottles with spirits and jars with lipstick scattered on the table top. Francesca took out the folded sheet of paper with torn edges. She turned it out and read. I decided that it was a page taken from some old book. Paper is already yellow, and the text itself almost faded. The countess revealed the book in the stored place and compared its content with her leaflet. So uncertain and timidly you usually collect pieces of puzzle. Francesca took a deep breath, as if she did not find what she was looking for. She reached out to blew a candle and here she saw me in the window. In her eyes expanded from horror, like two lakes, reflected a flexible gold silhouette of a winged snake.

«How is it possible?» Only she was able to whisper, but the winged something had already disappeared. Francesca ran up to the windowsill, but it was already empty there.

So simply, the countess could not retreat, she saw the whole golden guest, looked at the snake, but heard a charm, human voice, who wished only «good night, countess, because calm can not last very long.» After all the sounds dropped in a night emptiness, Francesca seemed to hear them so far. Switching out of the bedroom, she found the side narrow ladder and went into the attic, and from there rose to the roof. Tile slid under the barefoot feet, but Francesca did not want to go back to the heat and peace. She was waiting for that – that’s somewhere at the level of dark sloping roofs again flashed flexible, golden silhouette, but it did not appear. Only the gray sea of urban homes stretched around, and the wind walked over it and cleaned lonely stars on the blue sky.

Francesca wanted to call someone, say someone’s name, but never decided. She turned back, almost stumbled on the ladder, forgotten by a chimney-sweep. The low roof’s slope hung over the windows of the upper floors, and it would be easy to hide not only a flexible flying creature, but even a child. Francesca, of course, did not calculate it. She last turned on the sleeping city and went down to the room, not even worrying that someone from the waking guests could see her without a mask.

Then I opened the window of not busy room and slept there until the morning. Nobody even paid attention to the draught, escaping from the slots of the locked door. The owner never came to disturb my dream, although I honestly was going to pay, if I was forced in the tavern. Even before awakening, I realized that Francesca had long gathered to go and her carriage had already left the city. I could easily follow her. I already knew the route by which they will return, besides, on the roads, deep furrows from the wheels were well noticeable.

The weather spoiled. The wet snow alternated with raindrops, and find the tracks of the crew on the risky road was increasingly harder. Overcoming another turn of the way, I heard the snoring of horses and the orders of the coachman. Due to the subtle trunks of the trees, it was possible to see the crew, accidentally went from the road and fell into a swamp, on which the ice was melted. The wheels of the carriage were stuck in the mud. The groom and the coachman tried to force their horses to pull the crew from the mud but they didn’t manage it. Francesca stood a little bit away from the roadway. Sometimes she looked back, hoping to see another carriage. Nobody was in a hurry to help her.

Without thinking, I took my initial and most familiar appearance, and came out of the trees. Francesca almost screamed from surprise when I suddenly turned out to be right at her back, because a minute ago the road was empty. I did not even move my hand, but she felt the persistent touching io her shoulder. Too amazed to greet me, Francesca was silent.

«Maybe your ladyship will allow me to provide a help?» I asked. It sounded as if I was going to raise a scarf, and not to correct the traffic accident. Francesca just shrugged and said:

«I would only bless your efforts, but how can you manage it one… without servants?» She hinted at the fact that I would have to explain how I was here alone without a horse and the carriage. I did not satisfy her curiosity, but only strictly ordered the groom and the coachman:

«Get out!»

They exchanged glances incredulously, fearing, as if they did not hear correctly, but under a shrill, ice-looking stranger left their work. With a quiet whisper, the meaning of which no one did not understand, I calmed down the horses, and then I presented as the rims of the wheels, bypassing the dirt, climb over the mud and roll on solid soil. The crew slightly straightened. When, I was a man, my mental efforts would hardly have enough for such hard work, but now everything went out, as in a dream. Observing the order, the horses themselves pulled forward a carriage, which thanks to my invisible support became much easier, and soon the crew was already on the road.

«Witchcraft!» Quietly murmured the coachman, raised his hand to cross, but then looked at me right away, scared to make some pious gesture in my presence. After all, an extraordinary acquaintance of his hostess can be angry. And what will his anger lead?

Francesca through the power thanked me and allowed to help her climb into the carriage. In her glance flashed all the same spark of suspicion and recognition, but I did not pay attention to it.

I said goodbye, closing the door, but she looked out in the window and suggested.

«Do not want us to bring you to your estate?»

«Oh,» I extended and carelessly dismissed. «To travel, I do not need a carriage.»

She nodded, as if she understood something that we were both afraid to speak out loud, although in fact it was incomprehensible to her.

Returning to my still not renovated abandoned estate, I found the porch of uninvited visitors. Most likely, Mr. and two servants who spent all their strength to keep the excited horses on the spot. All animals almost went mad when they found themselves within my newly acquired possessions. In Mr. I immediately recognized Selvin. He was already took for the door ring, it hit at the metal door with a buzz. The door, of course, remained locked. Despite the insistence of Selvin, no one hurried to let him into the house.

«Probably the owner is not at home,» timidly suggested one of the servants. «Maybe we will return, and then send a servant with the message.»

He was already frozen under the snowfall. Selvin himself also hung up in a fur coat, but did not go away.

«Let’s wait,» he said calmly, but in the intonation of the voice, the order was felt.

«Good afternoon and welcome!» I said, suddenly appearing behind his back.

Selvin, of course, was surprised that he did not hear my steps, but from politeness did not openly show his amazement.

«Come in!» I invited, and the door, which before that did not succumb to a persistent knock, nor a strong push suddenly opened itself. We entered the hall. It was no less cold here than in the open sky and Selvin, forgetting about the manners, began to blow on the frozen palms. He looked around the staircase and the floor, littered with dry leaves and garbage and in his glance flashed disgust.

«The house, of course, is good, but would you not like to put it in order,» he said, as soon as we went upstairs, leaving his servants near the cold fireplace at the bottom.

«Why?» I responded carelessly.

«It is impossible to live in ruins,» he began to chat, only in order not to remain in the grave, frightening silence, with the hidden strength of which he already knew.

«And where did you get that I live here?»

«Well, you bought the estate, and I decided…»

«How did you know that I bought it exactly, you do not know who I am or why did I come to your country?»

«Well, such news is spread quickly,» he began to speak, as if justifying the excessive interest in my personal affairs. «In addition to the fact that His Majesty became interested in you… You have an unusual appearance, only this helped the king to find your trail. Those who meet you admire and… a little scared.»

«You said that the house needs to be put in order,» I interrupted his coming speech. «Are you trying to teach me how to live?»

«In no way,» Selvin immediately passed in front of my strictness and tried hastily to justify himself. «I just fulfill the royal order.»

«Yes, this is the duty of the courtiers, to serve the king and fulfill all his orders.»

If Selvin was embarrassed such straightforwardness, he did not manifest it.

«The messenger with the letter, was sent here and did not find you at home, so I came myself, took on such courage,» after the pause he spoke again. «I generally thought that it was useless to send messengers. But his majesty is worried about you.»

«He takes almost parental care and it is flattering,» I nodded condescendingly.

Selvin shuddered at the mention of parental concerns.

«You see, a rumor reached the king that you are experiencing some financial problems,» he admitted.

«That’s how? And I did not know?» And I thought about myself that it was a complete hypocrisy – to have the treasury full with gold and jewels and at the same time acquire a reputation of the beggar. The favorable king decided that the poor, pretty, rural nobleman needs his help. It was ridiculous, but, restraining laughter, I got a fire in the fireplace. Selvin watched the movement of my hands, but it was not possible to notice from where I took the stream of fire, when I didn’t have a steel, nor trunk, nor even candles. There were cold spilled ashes and fragments of dry branches in the old fireplace, but it began to reproduce the saving heat and the visitor did not have to rub his reddish palms. He sighed lightweight, feeling a stream of heat from the fire, and even wanted to sit down in a chair, but it turned out to be too dusty and the nobleman had to continue the conversation on the feet.