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to pay for the glamour of castle life. Standing glumly before them, I learned that immobility best prevented pinpricks and chidings, and also that the women soon forgot this dressmaker's dummy had ears of her own.
    So it was today. The dressmaker arrived in a particularly foul mood because, I soon ascertained, the queen expected
her,
an artist, a genius with drape and line, the acclaim of every state event, to finish soldiers' uniforms.
    "One would think we were going to be attacked tomorrow," the woman sniffed, as though she had unique access to Drachensbett's tacticians.
    "Not if their army's scared to cross the mountain!" said one of her assistants, giggling.
    The dressmaker's quick scowl shut her up, and the two looked about guiltily. (Such was my status that they did not even glance upward.) Talk shifted to a handsome new chef, and soon enough the dressmaker departed on one of her innumerable trips to the privy, for the woman had a bladder the size of an apricot.
    I took advantage of this brief interlude: "What does the Drachensbett army fear?"
    As these were the first words I had uttered in ages, the girls jumped like a pair of frogs.
    "Please," I pleaded. "Tell me. I beg you."
    They eyed each other. "She's got a right, you know," said one. "Besides, remember her mum—how she cured your sister."
    "Oh yes," said the other, lighting up. "You should've seen poor Mary, her whole head covered in scabs, big clumps of hair falling out, and pus leaking everywhere—she couldn't sleep lying down, she'd stain the pillow so—"
    "What are they afraid of?" I pursued, having no interest in this change of subject.
    The girls looked at each other and burst into gleeful laughter. "A dragon!"
    "What? Are you saying the Drachensbett soldiers truly believe a dragon lives on Ancienne?"
    The first girl—the one without the oozing sister—nodded. "They say that's what did in the king and your ma—"
    The girls jerked their attention back to my hemline as the dressmaker reappeared.
    Drachensbett blamed my mother's death on a dragon! And not simply country folk whispering stories around a winter fire, but the king himself had the gall to kneel before Queen Sophia on the day after her husband's death—on the afternoon of his interment!—and assert that King Ferdinand had been killed by a fairy-tale creature! Ambush and murder and kidnapping are awful enough, but worse still is veiling such heinous crimes with falsehood. But then, when had Drachensbett ever demonstrated honesty, or nobility? Truly they were an enemy to be despised.
    Despised, yes, but also feared. Their awful deeds clearly fit into a grand and cunning scheme to which we in Montagne, the dressmaker not excluded, were patently blind.
Small wonder the queen demanded uniforms for her soldiers and elevated Xavier the Younger to commander, my father's rank. Though it pained me to see the man sporting my father's insignia, now I could understand the reasoning behind it.
    Many a night I huddled in my library window, studying the mountain. Where once I had looked for evidence of my father, now I scanned every shadow and ridgeline for enemy movement. Far above my head, I knew, soldiers tramping the parapets watched with as keen an eye, and this knowledge gave me some small comfort. Still, I worried what Drachensbett planned, and why my parents of all people had to suffer their insatiable greed. But I had no one to whom to present my many questions, no one to offer me comfort and reassurance, and so I was left, despondent and alone, to my lessons.
    ***
    Up to the day of the Badger Tragedy, my hours had been primarily occupied with such rigorous pursuits as poking sticks into holes and covering myself with mud, at both of which I excelled. I knew my letters and numbers of course, and devoured my beloved fairy tales, plodding through more serious work when forced. To be frank, I was young for my age, still playing with dolls when most girls in Montagne had
graduated to more serious