The King's Honest Mate

"You're late," the herald said, not looking up from his list. "I'm exactly on time. Your palace clocks run early." I held the satchel closer. "I assume that's a dragon thing." "The buyer wants it opened in the great hall. Tonight. Before the court." I stopped walking. "That's not what we agreed. I deliver the flask, I take the coin, I leave." "The coin was paid in advance. Double." He finally looked at me, and his nostrils flared, quick and rude. "You smell of nothing. Remarkable." "It's a gift." My face stayed smooth. My stomach didn't. "Who's the buyer?" "Someone who wants the forger's own hand on the stopper. In case of tampering." "Tampering with a mate-scent." I laughed. "Who'd bother?" He didn't answer. He opened a pair of black doors, and heat rolled over me like breath. I had never seen so many dragons in one place. They stood in clusters under chandeliers of smoked glass, in silk and ember-colored velvet, each wearing a scent that told the room who they were. Under it all ran the sweet smoke of the walls themselves. My rule had kept me away from this for six years. Never forge for a dragon. Never go near one. "This is a mistake," I said quietly. "It's a commission. Walk." He led me down the long aisle. Heads turned and noses lifted. A woman in green leaned toward her husband. "She has no scent at all. Is she even real?" "Real enough to be overpaid," I said, loud enough for her to hear. Her husband choked on his wine. I felt better for about three steps. At the foot of the dais, the herald stopped me with two fingers on my sleeve. "Hold it up. Let them see it." I drew the flask from the satchel. It was no longer than my hand, and the glass had gone warm from my pocket. It held the best work I had ever done, and I couldn't remember what I'd bled into it. That was the point. That was the price of the craft. Whatever I put in the still was gone, and all I kept was an aching wrist and a name for the flask in my head: the one that gets me out of the city. "Say what it is," the herald murmured. "A mate-scent," I said, louder. "Made to order. It will smell like the one you were meant to find." A man on the dais stood. He was tall and broad, dressed too plainly for the room. No jewels, no perfume at all. Burn scars climbed the side of his neck above a dark collar. I noticed the missing scent first, the way I notice everything: a gap in the air where a person should be. "Open it," he said. His voice was low and even. He didn't sound like a man giving an order. He sounded like a man who had spent years being careful about what he asked for. "With respect, I'd like to know who I'm opening it for." "You will. Open it." "That's a very dragon way to answer a question." Someone laughed, then stopped fast. The man on the dais didn't smile. He just watched me, and I couldn't read his face. I never could. I read air. I pulled the wax stopper with my thumbnail. The scent came out slowly, then bloomed, and the hall went silent all at once, as if a hand had closed over it. A glass broke somewhere. A woman made a sound that wasn't a word. "That's not possible," the herald whispered. "It's perfume. It's supposed to be" My chest caught fire. It wasn't pain. It was worse, a pull so hard I stumbled forward, flask in my fist, as the scent poured over my skin and stayed. I had never had a scent of my own, and now I did, and it was the same as the one in the flask. "Mate," someone said. Then another voice, and another. "A true bond. It took." "No. It's a forgery. I made it. That's my" The herald's hand clamped around my arm, his mouth at my ear. "Say that again and they'll hang you before the candles burn down. Forgers die, girl. Be quiet." My legs went cold. He was right, and I hated that he was right. "Let go of me," I said, as softly as I could. "Smile." I smiled. It felt like cracked porcelain. The man from the dais was coming down the steps. He moved the way dragons do, carefully, as if the floor might not hold him. The nobles drew back to let him through. He didn't look at them. He looked only at me, and the closer he came, the harder it got to breathe. Then I saw his coat. Black wool, with a crest stitched over his heart in thread the color of old fire. A winged serpent, jaws wrapped around a torch. I had seen that banner once, on a hill, with smoke boiling behind it. I knew that crest down to the stitching. "You," I said. He stopped an arm's length away. Everyone in the hall stopped with him. "Do you know what the law says about a bond like this?" he asked quietly. "I don't care what the law says." "It can't be undone. It can't be denied. Not by you, and not by me." "Then I'll be the first." My voice shook, and I hated that too. "I don't know you." "Yes, you do. Not my face. You know the rest." I stepped back and hit the herald's chest. The flask trembled in my hand. I had planned this for nine years, every cut and every coin. I had a knife in my boot and a speech in my head, and neither was any use now. "I'm going to ask you something, and you're going to answer." "Ask." "Are you the king?" "Yes." The word went through me like cold water. He had gone very still, like an animal that hears something behind it in the dark. Then his face changed, and at first I had no word for it. Then I did. He was afraid. Not of me. He was looking at the flask in my hand like it might open a door he'd nailed shut. "Where did you get that scent?" he whispered. "I made it. I make everything I sell." "From what?" "I don't know. I never do. That's how it works." I pressed the flask against my ribs. "Why does it matter?" He leaned in. The heat of him reached me, and the new scent on my skin rose to meet it. "Because I know exactly what that is," the king said, so low only I could hear. "That scent smells like a village on fire." The room tilted. I had never kept a memory like that, not for a day. I'd made sure of it years ago. Whatever burned that night, I had bled out of myself and let go. Except it wasn't gone. It was in my hand. I had sold it to a stranger, and the stranger was the man who had lit the fire, and he had just breathed it in.