Gill reflected that his own life was a microcosm of the Silver Circle’s history. In disgrace, with his purpose gone, he had filled his time emptying bottles. How had those giants of men, who had lived their lives doing deeds that would be talked of for more than a thousand years, settled into ordinary lives when those days were gone? How do you accept that the great purpose of your life was past?
He had been given a second chance, a reprieve the Silver Circle never got. Stopping this dragon was his great life’s purpose, but it had come to him when he was least ready for it. He looked at Valdamar’s tomb marker and smiled forlornly. If it had come at any other time, would it have been a true test?
He walked through the rest of the crypt, but he only recognised Valdamar’s name. One hero among many, the only one to be remembered. There was tragedy in that. Considering that Valdamar’s tomb had not been given precedence over any of the others, it was difficult to believe they had not done anything to distinguish themselves. Perhaps the years and retellings had handed their tales to another hero.
The back wall was carved with text from ceiling to floor. The inscription was flanked on either side by representations of the two figures he had seen near the altar in the previous room—the supplicant knight, and the majestic, robed figure holding a cup in one hand and a small stick in the other. It was clearly an anointing ceremony of some sort. Guillot himself had been through one when he joined the Chevaliers, although the cup he had been handed had been far larger and never seemed to empty.
He cast his eyes over the carved words but could not understand them. Occasionally a word might seem familiar, but not enough to make sense of it. Whatever was written there would have to remain a mystery, at least for the time being. If he survived all that was to come, perhaps he would be able to find someone at the university in Mirabay who could read such things.
With one final look around—his gaze lingering on Valdamar’s tomb—Guillot knew it was time to get back to Trelain. It seemed there was nothing more for him to discover here, although the secret chambers left him with many questions.
* * *
Trelain had a bleak atmosphere when Guillot returned, worse even than when he had departed. He suspected that word had leaked of the injured man recuperating in the Black Drake, and that he was the survivor of an ill-fated dragon-slaying attempt. Guillot could smell fear on the air. The streets were emptier, and much of the activity was of people preparing for the worst—shutting up properties, hurrying about as though every moment in the open put them in further danger. People had been unsure before. Now they were afraid.
There were still plenty of villages between the dragon and Trelain—as far as he knew—and it could happily feed and destroy its way through the countryside for weeks before reaching the city. That wouldn’t matter, though. Soon the panic would start and everyone who could go, would.
He didn’t expect the Order’s healers to arrive until that evening at the earliest—more likely at some point the next day. While he still felt better than he had before, thanks to Brother Hallot, the battering he had taken in the dragon’s cave had taken a toll. Another round of healing might bring him back to his best, which was an appealing thought. It gave him hope that he could prevail, although, despite the gravity of the situation, he couldn’t help but feel it would be cheating. It was odd how daft notions of honour and fidelity stuck in your head, even after a lifetime of seeing their gaping flaws in the cold light of reality.
He wondered what Valdamar would have made of such thoughts. The perfect hero, the man to model oneself on. True, brave, and just. Guillot wondered if he had ever kicked a man in the balls during a fight, or slid a dagger into an enemy’s back on the battlefield. He shook his head. There was no shame in looking for an edge when the stakes were mortal. The old Chevaliers were rumoured to have been given magical gifts by the Imperial sorcerers. If Amaury’s warrior mages could do the same for him, he would welcome it with open arms.
The stable boy appeared as if by magic as soon as Guillot entered the stable yard at the Black Drake. He slid down from the horse and tossed the lad a penny before heading inside. A hot meal, a bath if one could be rustled up, then sleep. To his surprise, dal Sason was sitting by the fire.
“Feeling better then?” Guillot said, trying to muster as much cheer in his voice as he could.
Dal Sason turned to look at him, a grimace of pain twisting his face.
“Not feeling better then,” Guillot commented.
“I’ve broken ribs. What do you think?”
Guillot shrugged and sat. “What’s good to eat tonight?”
“Where in hells have you been?”
“I went for a ride.”
“You’ve been gone for two days.”
“It was a long ride,” Guillot said.
“I thought you’d run off. Thought your nerve had gone.”
“Thanks for the vote of confidence.”
Dal Sason fell silent for a moment. “Sorry. That was unfair.”
“Understandable enough. It seems like half the town’s getting ready to leave.”
“Word must have gotten out that we didn’t kill it.”
Guillot nodded. “Surprised the panic hasn’t spread faster.”
“As soon as word of its next attack gets here, things will get ugly fast. It’s up to us to try to stop that.”
“I know,” Guillot said. “Do you really think we’re up to it?”
“We have to try,” dal Sason said.
Guillot laughed. They’d done that once already, and it hadn’t gone so well. “Is it worth it?”
“Worth what?” dal Sason said.
“Whatever the Prince Bishop is paying you. Is it enough?”
Dal Sason gave a sad smile. “In our line of work, is it ever enough?”
CHAPTER
39
Solène rocked gently from side to side as the horse trotted along the road toward Trelain. She had done the vast majority of her wandering on foot, with only the occasional ride in a cart or wagon. She didn’t think she would ever feel entirely comfortable on horseback, perched just high enough for the drop to look daunting.
She didn’t know how to feel about returning to Trelain. On the one hand, the growing sense of misgiving that had been twisting in her stomach for the past few days was gone. She had realised there was a problem, and now she was doing something about it. However, the last time she was in Trelain, the townsfolk had wanted to burn her at the stake. She was torn between the desire to spur the horse to a gallop to get to Guillot all the sooner, and turning around and fleeing from trouble. People tended to have short memories, but she knew she risked her life by returning to the city.
Leverre was not proving the most talkative of travelling companions—although after all he had been through, and after having ridden through the night, he must have been utterly exhausted—so Solène was left to stew in her own thoughts. She tried to use the time to connect all the pieces of information she’d gathered, with little success.
“How did he save your life?”
The voice came as such a surprise that Solène jumped in her saddle.
“Pardon?”
“Guillot. What did he do that saved your life?”
Solène felt anxious when she thought about it. That day was the closest she had come to death. “The townsfolk discovered I could do magic,” Solène said. Leverre grunted an acknowledgement. “They were going to burn me.” Admitting it out loud doused her in emotion, and she could feel a lump form in her throat. She had never spoken about it before, never acknowledged to herself how close she had come to a terrifying and agonising death. She had tried to take it in her stride, filing it away in her mind with all the other daily hardships of life when you have no one, have nothing. She’d be damned if she shed a tear in front of Leverre, however. He was both her superior officer—if that mattered anymore—and one of the surliest people she had ever met. She refused to show weakness to him.
“I saw a witch burn
ed when I was a child,” Leverre said. “I’ll never forget it. I’ve been to war twice. I’ve seen horrible things; friends cut to pieces, a field littered with so many dead it made a butcher’s house smell like a rose garden, but watching that woman die was the worst thing I’ve ever seen. I hoped the Order would change all of that, but I’m not so sure anymore.” He sighed. “I could already do things, you see. Small things—nothing like what I’m told you’re able to do. After the burning, I hid that part of myself, pushed it so far down it was all but gone when the Prince Bishop finally found me.
“I always wondered why he sponsored me for the Academy. My father was a blacksmith. Not too many blacksmith’s sons go to the Academy. I worked hard, almost forgot about the touch, as I used to call it. After the Academy, it was the army. Then, one day, the Prince Bishop called on me, told me he always knew that there was more to me than meets the eye, and brought me into the Order. There were no more than twenty or thirty in it then, a mix of scholars from the university, like Seneschal dal Drezony, soldiers like me, and one or two other talented strays he’d found along the way. Like you, I suppose. No offence.”
Solène laughed. “None taken. Stray describes me pretty well, I think. What did he do for you? Guillot, I mean, when he saved you?”
Leverre took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “In truth, I’m not really sure. I took a bad knock on the head. That monster really rang my bell!” He chuckled. “When sense started to come back, Gill was hauling me into the daylight. Hallot, Quimper, and Eston were dead. Doyenne and dal Sason were still fighting, but she didn’t make it out. Dal Sason wouldn’t have either, if it wasn’t for Gill.”
“He’s an interesting man,” Solène said. “I’d like to get to know him better.” Leverre looked over at her and raised an eyebrow. “I mean, it sounds like he has quite a history.”
Leverre let out a laugh that sounded like a sick dog barking. “He certainly has that. He was once considered the best swordsman in the world. In fact, he was—he won the Competition. If that wasn’t enough, he was the great hero on the third day at Heilsbrun in the Ventish Wars. Led a charge that took a bridge that thousands had died fighting over the previous two days. We might well still be there fighting for it if he hadn’t. Stories of the things men do in battle are usually talked up afterward, but that one wasn’t. I was there. Seeing him go across that bridge, knowing he was a Mirabayan, well, it was really something. Filled you with whatever it takes to convince a man to charge at a pike wall. Charge we did, and run they did. It really was something.”
He had a gentle smile on his face, but he wiped it off as soon as he saw her looking at him.
“He came back from the Ventish Wars a hero. He was a legend by the time he came back from the Szavarian War. I didn’t see action in that one. Then the king had him inducted into the Silver Circle and appointed him royal champion. He married the most beautiful woman in the kingdom, protected the king—what more could a man of arms ask for?” He chuckled. “It was all downhill for him after that, though. He’s lost his wife, his child, his banner. For a man like him, that’s everything. It makes me sick to see what he became, but you can’t blame him for it, I suppose. There’s something ironic in the kingdom having broken its greatest swordsman before it needed him the most, don’t you think?”
This time, Solène raised an eyebrow. “I’m not sure if it would have made any difference.”
“What do you mean?”
“I was doing some research for the Prince Bishop. The old Chevaliers, the dragonslayers, they were magically enhanced. Even then a lot of them were killed, taking on dragons.”
“Killing a dragon is never going to be an easy thing, no matter what advantages you have.”
“What about Gill and the Prince Bishop? What is it between them?”
Leverre shrugged. “I don’t know, aside from the fact that they were friends once. The Prince Bishop is a banneret. Was a swordsman in his youth. Then he got hurt and life took him in a different direction. Not sure when they fell out, but there’s certainly no love lost between them.”
Solène chewed her lip for a moment. “Do you know anything about a cup?”
“A cup?”
“An ancient one. One that might have some magical significance. I’ve seen it called the Amatus Cup, and I think there’s a chance it might still be in Mirabaya somewhere.” She watched him as she spoke, and could tell from his quickly hidden reaction that he knew what she was talking about.
“I don’t…” He took a deep breath and let it out with a sigh. “It’s what we were looking for the first time we went up to the dragon’s cave. When we woke it up.”
Solène’s jaw dropped. She felt her heart race with excitement. Did he have some of the answers she was looking for? “Why were you looking for it?”
“The Prince Bishop wanted it,” Leverre said, with the fervour of a man seeking to unload a great burden. “He said it was vital to the Order’s success. So much of what we’re doing comes from the ancient Imperial documents that he’s dug up that this mission didn’t seem all that unusual. It made sense that there might be something old and hidden out there which would come in useful.”
“What does it do?”
Leverre chuckled. “I didn’t need to know that to find it, so he didn’t tell me.”
“And how were you going to find it? What led you to the cave?” Questions were coming to her faster than her mouth could get them out.
He looked over at her. “You’re all questions. What is it to you?”
“The Prince Bishop wanted me to find information that would help us kill the dragon. I think the Cup might be what we’re looking for.”
Leverre laughed. “Our days of working for the Prince Bishop are well and truly over. Take my word for it. He’s not a man who forgives. Or forgets. Once we’ve warned Gill, we’ll both need to disappear.”
“The beast still needs to be killed,” she said. “Not for him, but for all the people who’ll be slaughtered if someone doesn’t. It might as well be us. We might be able to help Gill do it. The Cup might be of use in that. Is there any chance that we can find it?”
Leverre looked away from her and out to the horizon. “The Prince Bishop told me that it would create an incredibly dense concentration of the Fount, that someone with my familiarity with the Fount would be able to sense it against the background noise of all that energy, whereas a novice wouldn’t. He was right. I could feel it the moment I walked into the dragon’s cave. It was like a tight knot of threads in a sheet of perfectly woven silk.”
“Do you think it’s still up there?”
Leverre laughed. “No. Gill has it. He picked it up when we were in the cave.”
“Guillot has it?” Solène said.
He looked at her, a curious expression on his face. “Yes, he does. I’m certain. I saw him with it. I could feel that same knot of energy coming from it when he showed it to me.”
Solène slumped in her saddle, vacillating between intense feelings of relief and disbelief. If they already had the Cup, perhaps the solution to their problem was close at hand—assuming they could figure out how to use it.
There might be an answer in the archive—or in the books in the Prince Bishop’s office. She would have to turn back now if she wanted to look, leaving Guillot to his fate. There was a chance he would be able to defend himself, but even the greatest swordsman in the world, at his peak, was as vulnerable to an unexpected knife in the back as anyone else.
She shook her head to dismiss the thought. Guillot was the only man alive who knew what was said at the Silver Circle’s initiation. She needed to know everything he could remember about it. It was a slim hope, but the only one she had. Casting magic on a person was very different from casting it on an object. Even if it was well intended, the things that could go wrong were legion.
CHAPTER
40
Late the next afternoon, when they were not far from Trelain, Solène spotted a group of riders on the roa
d ahead, going in the same direction as them. Everyone else they had passed had been going the other way—fleeing the dragon. This group was different, and it looked as though they were wearing matching cream travelling cloaks, just like the ones she and Leverre wore. She looked at him, slumped in his saddle, drifting in and out of sleep. He had spent several hard days on the road with almost no rest, and it amazed her that he had held up as well as he had.
“Leverre.”
He grunted.
“Up ahead.”
He snapped upright, his eyes wide. “That’s them.”
“I know. That’s why I woke you.”
He squinted. “Five. No, six. More than I was expecting.”
“Gill was the best swordsman in the world. The Prince Bishop isn’t likely to take any chances.”
Leverre grunted again. “If they’re actually Order people, I’d say Dreue and Gamet are with them. They’re the most suited for this type of work. Vicious bastards, both of them. They’d both be rotting in a dungeon somewhere if the Prince Bishop hadn’t found a use for them.”
“That sounds encouraging,” Solène said sarcastically. “What do we do now?”
“There’s two options as I see it. The first is, we ride up to them and pretend the Prince Bishop sent us to fetch them back to Mirabay. We’ll have to go back with them, though, so Gill won’t get a warning. It buys time though, and maybe we could get word to him by pigeon or private messenger.”
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