Dragon’s Empire – 3. Countess and Dragon. Natalie Yacobson

I did not want to take a boarder, I have Percy, who was arbitrarily volunteered to help me in all matters. I could not entrust Vincent a single order. So, he simply settled on me with the rights of a poor relative or a classmate. I didn’t know how he wanted to introduce himself to others.

      Having decided not to let him down for a long time, I also picked up the first hat, the cloak and went on feet to the castle of the countess. It was necessary to look after Vincent so that he did not make new troubles. After long flights and lightning overcoming spaces, it was pleasant to feel the solid soil under my feet. Probably, just as nice and unusually you went on feet after a long sailing.

      Francesca did not have to go far, the coach picked her up almost at the entrance of the cave. Of course, I did not wait for gratitude for my foresight. Most likely, if I decided to visit her openly again, I would run into new reproaches, charges and curses. Fortunately, I did not need directly declare my visit. For a long time, walking on the wide range of cities, I discovered the opportunity quietly to fly to the highest windows and without the knowledge of the owners to follow what they were doing at leisure. This way to apply courtesy visits I really liked. Lightning and silent movements and almost silent breathing did not give out my presence, but I could learn a lot of interesting things, while observing incognito. Only Vincent once managed to calculate that I was followed him, and then thanks to the lost hat, and not his own foresight.

      At the foot of the hill at which the count’s fortress rose, I stopped. This dark monolith with a multitude of towers appeared unshakably calm, but inside the warm halls, furnished in the last fashion, reigned real turmoil. The interested servants and maids whispered in the corridors, the last gossip turned out to have all new and very incredible details. The cooks were busy in the kitchen, hoping that the tired, sick mistress at the insistence of the doctor will try at least a broth – this decoction, similar to the soup now prescribed by doctors from all diseases. But the countess refused to eat and drink. Her strange disease could be reduced to the grave and a more stronger man, but Francesca was still full of power. What helped her stay on the feet, melancholy, thirst for revenge or impending madness?

      It was unlikely that she could lose the mind from such a smallness as her little adventure in the stormy sea. Looking at the window, I saw that Francesca in a black mourning dress sat in a chair and sorted by fingers an agate rosary. Her face was frozen and impenetrable as a very elegant plaster mask. There were doctors and a priest near her chair. Vincent was in the room too and sometimes inserted his witty replicas into the conversation. Light in the room was very small, and all bright things, even the tapestries are replaced with a more gloomy, an iron binding is inserted into the window: whether to dull the flow of light, or so that no one uninvited to penetrate the fortress through the window. It must be, after seeing the gold scales on the skins of the dragon, even the weakest light hurt the eyes of Francesca. She painfully pushed, looking at the candle. Their in the room was only a few, one in the candlestick on the table and three more in the wall brake. Doctors had to strain all their eyesight to get the necessary bottles of ointments from their aid kits. It was quite difficult to do, without disassembled the labels, such a number of herbs and minerals, crushed into powder, pill, balms and various tinctures were not even by the court doctor, to whom I was somehow advised to contact Florian.

      The priest proposed the countess a spiritual assistance and a prayer in blue velvet binding, but she pulled firmly a thick book with the tips of the fingers, as if she was afraid of burning. It is unlikely that someone noticed that she painfully frowned, only I caught the vibration of pain, which the countess felt. Only an hour spent in my castle did their job. Francesca could not force herself to pray. She was afraid of the deserved punishment. My castle was for her exactly a ghost world, where she was allowed only once.

      «Rest and decoctions of the doctors will certainly return your health,» Vincent said, he ignored all those present, referring to the countess alone, but she seemed to not notice him and other people who were around her.

      Vincent was right. She was very pale, even her bright scarlet lips became pale pink almost white.

      «We are so glad that you escaped from the devil, child?» inserted his word the priest. «The very devil who attacked…» He eloquently pointed with his hand in the one way, where the ashes of the burned village were left behind the deaf walls of the castle.

      Francesca did not even respond. She looked at one point and did not want to talk to anyone.

      «You need to be glad that the Savior appeared on time,» said Vincent, but no one caught a note of irony in his voice. «By the way, you are very lucky that he managed to save you.»