Page 68 of The Dragon Queen

“That woman, she?—”

“The cogs?—”

I felt like everyone was talking at once and I couldn’t hear any one of them. Each woman demanded my attention. I remembered then what Glimmer had said this morning, then held up a hand.

Only for everyone to fall silent.

By the gods, I thought,that worked.

“I can see everyone is feeling heightened,” I said in my calmest voice. “This concerns me. I pulled you away from your work at the keep to help with the war effort. I bear responsibility for that. If there is a problem that needs fixing, I will do my level best to find a solution, when we are all feeling more centred.”

Maggie sat first, and when she backed down, so did some of the women around her. Nancy shook her head, let out a frustrated little hiss, and then did the same. Eventually everyone sat down, facing each other mulishly around the table, but still, silence reigned.

“Thank you for this,” I said. “Now, can someone tell me what’s wrong?”

Chapter 32

“We need to get these cogs done faster,” Nancy said. “We need these thimble things.”

“Gimbals,” Roland corrected.

“Gimbals.” She nodded to me. “That’s what’s going to save our boys, isn’t it, Pippin?”

“Your Majesty?—!”

Lady Oxford was about to splutter more, but I cut her off with a gesture.

“It is,” I replied, “at least that’s our hope.”

“Then we need to make them properly,” Maggie said. “If Hallin…” She looked around her. “Rider Jericho and all the other dragon riders are depending on this piece of kit, we need to make it as reliable and well made as possible.”

“They’re going to drop them from the sky!” Nancy snapped. “All your hard work blown up in seconds, just like the king did the shipwreck.”

Both women sucked in breaths to start arguing, their allies ready to also leap into the fray.

“This isn’t about cogs and gimbals,” I said, staringinto each woman’s eyes in turn. “You’d never even heard of the things before yesterday, I’d wager.”

“I had.” A young woman raised her hand and then looked around her furtively. “I mean my father was a sailor and they use them for…” Her voice trailed away as the silence grew.

“Then we at least have one team member with some practical experience,” I said, and for just a second, there was a little half-hearted chuckle that went up around the table. “But for those of us with landlubber fathers, I think these cogs,” I picked up one from the table and held it out, “represent something else. Hope.” I tossed it down on the table and then turned to the woman closest to me. “What do you hope for?”

“Me?” Her voice came out in a funny little squeak and she blinked, then looked around her. “Oh, well…” It was that long sigh that let me know something was coming. “My brother–brothers really, if the youngest can persuade my father to let him go–Bill’s signed up for the infantry, and Charles wants to do the same, but my mother… She cries at night when she thinks no one can hear her, wondering if either of them will come back. The men are all caught up in the glory of the thing.”

“As they should be.” I frowned as Lady Oxford bustled forward. “The king’s forces will prevail.”

“Except they don’t always, do they?” Nancy’s lips flattened into a line. “Those that stole those dragon eggs, they were Royal Riders, right up until the point they weren’t. They turned traitor.”

“Well, that won’t happen again. We have the gods on our side,” Lady Flora said.

“So where were they when those traitors cut down the guards stationed around the hatching sands?” Nancy’s voice became flat, desolate. “One of them was my cousin. In the infirmary now, and he still hasn’t woken up from being conked on the head. People get hurt in a fight, milady, and that’s not always decided by who’s right or who’s wrong.”

“So you seek to make sure our side is given every advantage.” I stared down at the pile of cogs. “When you work, you can push aside those fears.” In my mind, I saw Lady Oxford’s needlesworking then to create socks for soldiers. “You feel like you’re doing something, anything to even the score.”

“It’s better than hanging around the keep like a bad smell,” Maggie grumbled. “The riders are hardly ever there now, and when they are, they’re preoccupied and exhausted.” Her gaze was sharp, almost cutting into me as her eyes met mine. “We need to do what we can to help our boys.”

“And we will.”

I pawed through the pile of cogs and then said, “Who among you has a hand for drawing?” The sailor’s daughter and Lady Flora indicated that they were. “I’ll get you to transcribe the template onto the metal. Master Roland?”

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