The road got narrower and narrower, and the sky above darker and darker. My healer’s knowledge reminded me of all the bad things that could happen from failing to void a full bladder. And the pain was remarkable. I had never deliberately deprived myself like this before, and it was shocking how unpleasant it was, how much just sitting still was like torture. A torture I could, perhaps, stop simply by catching Heikki’s attention and asking him nicely for help. But I still couldn’t make myself do it.
We wound down out of the trees and into a little valley in the foothills, with a small stone keep at the head of it, its back to the mountain and its front commanding a view of the little valley and its entrance from the plains.
“Lord Hei’s keep,” Heikki told me. “He’ll be glad to get you. He’s been looking for something like you for a long time. And he’ll be even gladder that you’re black-haired like him. Be good to him, don’t argue, and he might even take you as his wife.”
We were met by guards as we approached the keep. All of them were dark-haired and slanting-eyed like me, and unlike Heikki and the other man—or Joki, for that matter—but shorter. And when Lord Hei came out, his hair was as black and straight as mine, and when he smiled at the sight of me, his eyes disappeared into his cheekbones just as my father’s did. If he had been taller, and had the gentle air of a small-town scholar instead of the feral eyes of a small-time lord, he would have looked just like any of the men in my family.
“What’s this?” he asked. “What have you brought me, Heikki? Is she what I think she is?”
“That she is.” Heikki half-pulled, half-helped me out of the cart, and held me up when my numb legs gave way underneath me. “The first female dragon found on the plains in a generation. Joki was bringing her back, but we captured her while he was sleeping.”
“How do I know she is what you say she is? Show me.”
Heikki and Lord Hei haggled briefly over when and how they would demonstrate my dragon-ness. In the end, Heikki went back to the cart and retrieved an even smaller vial than Joki’s.
“I’m going to give this to you,” he told me. “It won’t hurt you; you know that. No funny business.”
I had just enough time to think that I should seize the moment and bite him when he took off my gag, or use the strength that the blood gave me to fight my way free, before he forced the neck of the tiny vial between my lips and tipped it back, pouring not just a drop but a whole swallow, the entire contents of the vial, into my mouth. And then I could do nothing but scream and convulse like a woman struck by lightning, and then collapse into their waiting arms and lie there limply as they dragged me down into the bottom of the keep and threw me into an empty cell.
6
The cell was just long enough for me to lie full-length on the floor, providing I held my legs off to the side to avoid knocking over the slop-bucket in the corner. At least I had that, and wasn’t expected to lie in my own filth. I made use of it, twitching and stumbling and half-convinced by the way it kept pressing down on my head that I was wearing the ceiling as a hat, and then curled up in the corner and waited for whatever was going to happen to me.
7
Time was moving strangely, so I didn’t know whether the wait had been long or short when Lord Hei appeared, flanked by two men who looked enough like him to be his cousins. Or mine. There were not many of us black-haired people on this side of the mountains. Perhaps we were kin, although no one had ever said anything to me about noble blood. But it seemed there was a lot about my blood I didn’t know.
The sound of the cell door rattling open grated on my skin and seemed to crawl under my scalp and lodge somewhere in my spine. When I tried to stand, my legs gave way underneath me, and I had to hold onto the wall to keep myself upright. Even so I was still taller than everyone else. Maybe that was why they stood out in the corridor instead of coming inside. Some part of me that seemed very far way imagined rushing them and overpowering them and escaping. But that only made me shiver from fever till my teeth rattled in my head.
“Is she supposed to be like that?” Lord Hei asked.
The man to his right shrugged. “We gave her a lot,” he said. “The effect can be strong, especially at first, and especially if you don’t bleed them properly. You have to let out the weak blood to make way for the strong.”
“Should we wait till she recovers?” asked Lord Hei.
“Best to bleed her now,” said the man on his right. “She’s strong; like as not she’ll survive. But if we don’t make the change now, it might not get made.”
Lord Hei nodded a decisive nod. “Do it,” he said. “But don’t harm her.”
“There’s no way to do it without hurting her.”
“Laela.” Lord Hei came up to the open doorway. “We are going to help you. It will hurt a bit at first, but don’t struggle, and
