The next sound she heard was a squeal. A pig’s squeal. The knife clattered to the ground.
Solène stepped back and smoothed the front of her coat. Transformation magic always surprised her. She had only done it a couple of times, and never intentionally. It seemed as though it was her default defence when seriously threatened, which had been the case every time she had cast it. The first time, she had turned a rabid dog into a nose-twitching rabbit; the second, she’d changed a bully into a goat. That had been the incident that had forced her to flee her village. She knew from past experience that Arnoul would not remain a pig for long—a few minutes at most, unless she actively worked at prolonging the magic—and as soon as he reverted to his human form, she had no doubt he would denounce her as a witch.
It was Bastelle all over again, and it saddened her to think that her time in Trelain was over. Where would she make her bakery now? All the hard work she had put in in Trelain was for naught, all for want of being able to control her affliction. Still, what was the choice—having to move on, or having to carry a scar on her face for the rest of her life? Or worse? Angry, she was tempted to give the pig a good, hard kick, but it wasn’t in her nature. In any event, time was precious now. She needed to pack up her few possessions and flee. Where to?
She took a final look at Arnoul the Pig, wallowing in muck, snuffling about for food, and looking far more at home in the rubbish than he ever did in the tavern. Such a shame she didn’t have the time to enjoy it.
* * *
Solène jerked awake in the chair by the door in her small one-room home. Light came in through her threadbare curtains, and her travelling bag sat by her feet, where she had put it when she’d decided to rest for a moment before setting off. There was a barrage of banging on the door—the follow-up to the blow that had woken her. How long had she slept? Her heart raced with panic when there was more pounding on the door.
She swore. The same thing had happened with the dog and the bully—she had slept for hours after both incidents. She always felt tired after she used magic, but never as bad as when she transformed something. She should have remembered. She should have forced herself to keep going, not allowing herself to rest until she was miles from Trelain.
Arnoul would have been back in his usual form for hours. More than long enough to call the Town Watch, or worse, an Intelligencier.
There was another bang at the door, and she knew she had to act. There was one small window at the back of her room. Peering out, she saw two shadowy figures lurking outside. It confirmed her worst fear—men were coming to arrest her and there was no way out.
She took her black cloak from the nail on the wall, wrapped herself in it, and with no alternative, opened the door. There were a dozen people waiting to greet her, most of them soldiers. At their head stood an officer of the Town Watch. She recognised him—he drank at the tavern regularly—but they had only exchanged a few words. He had a dark expression on his face. At least he wasn’t an Intelligencier.
“You need to come with us, miss,” he said.
“Why? What’s wrong?” she said, but she knew the reason.
Someone shouted “witch,” and two Watchmen firmly grabbed Solène and dragged her out of her home.
CHAPTER
9
Trelain was the first stop on the road to Mirabay. It hove into view not long after nightfall, but many hours since Guillot’s backside and thighs had gone numb, unused to so much time in the saddle. The twinkling lights in its taller towers, which reached up above the town’s surrounding curtain wall, were a welcome sight. Guillot and dal Sason had spent the day in silence. He continued to feel unwell, but the symptoms were subsiding. Nonetheless, he sweated heavily and felt uncomfortably hot. His head ached and the anxiety that had gripped him on encountering the dragon was as imposing as ever. A cup or two of wine would have been welcome, but he had made himself a promise and was determined to stick to it. Those at the king’s court were welcome to think him a disgrace, but he had no desire to prove it to them by arriving drunk. The little pride he had left would not allow him to sink that low.
“Shall we stop for the night?” dal Sason asked.
Guillot nodded.
“The Prince Bishop is covering all the expenses?” Gill said.
“Of course.”
“We’re staying at the Black Drake, then.”
He had been worried that dal Sason might insist they press on. Although he had said nothing about it, he desperately longed for a break from the saddle. Pressing on and exhausting themselves would slow their journey in the end, not hasten it. In the morning they could exchange their horses at the Royal Waypost in town; the fresh mounts would let them make better time.
They rode into Trelain, passing through the gate with not so much as a glance from the tired guards. Trelain was far from the troubled western marches, and was shielded from the Darvarosians to the south by a range of impenetrable mountains. However, Mirabayan noblemen were famed for warring on one another. Thanks to intricately woven family ties, when inheritance time came around, there were often a great many cousins with a claim to press. Even in a province insulated from outside danger, sturdy walls were a necessity.
Though Trelain was a large town, it would still neatly fit within one of Mirabay’s districts. The wealth generated by the region’s winemaking was evident in the buildings that lined the streets, from the private homes of wealthy burgesses to the decorated limestone public buildings that dominated the skyline. The surroundings were a taste of what Mirabay would be like, and it made Guillot even more anxious.
Dal Sason went inside to book their rooms, while Gill brought their horses around to the inn’s stable yard. Given that the Prince Bishop was picking up the bills, Guillot had given dal Sason the name of the most expensive inn he knew of in Trelain—the Black Drake. The sign swinging over the ornate stone doorway, with its finely painted and fierce-looking black dragon, sent a chill through him, reminding Gill of what Yves had said—this was dragon country.
If he was being honest with himself, he was nervous about what lay ahead, about how he would feel, how he would be treated by people he had not seen in years. His fatigue hammered home how far removed he was from the man he had been. There was a time when he had been able to ride through the night and fight the next day. He knew he wasn’t yet too old for such feats. His poor conditioning could not be blamed on the ravages of time, only his own choices. He wondered if he could possibly undo the damage the last half-decade had wrought.
Looking at the people still on the streets at that hour of the evening, he wondered what they would think if he told them a dragon was attacking farms to the south. They would assume he was mad, obviously, and as he drifted ever further from the influence of alcohol, he began to wonder if he had imagined the whole thing. The attack he had witnessed was too vivid to be a hallucination. He could still smell the burning and feel the heat on his skin. The sinister black shape, its scales glistening in the moonlight, was an image that would never leave him.
Nevertheless, if the Prince Bishop wanted him for something, believing Guillot’s story and helping deal with it was the price he must pay. Assuming the Prince Bishop and the dragon were not in some way connected. As ridiculous as the notion seemed, Guillot could not shake it off. It seemed too much of a coincidence that dal Sason turned up just after the first attack.
There were other hamlets in the area, some closer to the mountains, and Guillot now regretted not riding out to see if they had experienced similar problems. There hadn’t been time, however. Even now, he feared there was little he could do to save his tenants’ livelihoods. The next village over, the ever-popular Montpareil, would benefit from Guillot’s actions. He couldn’t think of a time less suited for going without wine.
As he reached the stable yard entrance, he spotted a gathering of people adding wood to what looked like a hastily erected pyre in a small square at the end of the street. It was an odd thing to see at that time of day, so, cur
ious, he rode over.
“What’s going on here?” Guillot asked the first townsman whose eye he caught.
“Gonna burn a witch,” the man said, looking at the pyre and the small group of men who appeared to be in charge of the proceedings.
“A witch?” Gill asked.
“Aye, a witch.”
It had been some time since Guillot had heard of a witch trial. The Intelligenciers tended to deal with such things quietly.
“The duke’s holding witchcraft trials?” Guillot said.
“Duke’s in Mirabay,” the townsman said. “We found this ’un ourselves.”
“Then the duke’s magistrate tried her?”
The man shook his head and smiled, his expression one of excited euphoria.
Guillot nodded slowly. Nothing said justice like mob law. “When is she to burn?”
“First thing in the morning. Want to get the business done before the men in black show up.”
Guillot nodded again, and turned his horse back toward the stable yard entrance. He was caught between horror that mob justice was being done in the duke’s absence, and the satisfaction that he was not the only one who had allowed matters in his demesne to slide beyond his control. It was none of his business, however, and his thoughts quickly returned to the prospect of a warm bed.
* * *
Guillot woke in a state of great comfort, compounded by the thought that the Prince Bishop was paying. It took him a moment to realise his headache was gone, but he knew that was largely down to the fact that the previous night, a single nightcap had become a bottle, which had become two. He couldn’t remember if there had been a third, but could not discount the possibility. Either way, he was still drunk, and furious that his resolution of sobriety had not even lasted one day. Breakfast was as good as the bed, and he renewed his oath of temperance until he had finished what he had set out to do.
They waited at the entrance to the stable yard for the horses to be brought from the Royal Waypost by one of the inn’s stable hands. Gill’s own horse would be taken back to Villerauvais for what he considered to be a very reasonable addition to the Prince Bishop’s tab. For the rest of the journey, they would obtain fresh mounts at way stations along the road, a service provided for royal agents and mail carriers. Dal Sason had already been riding such a beast, so the exchange was easily made, but he’d had to send his official orders with the stable hand to have a horse made available to Gill.
“Fine morning,” dal Sason said, staring toward the light blue band of sky on the horizon.
Guillot shrugged.
“What do you make of that,” dal Sason said, pointing to the pyre as the stable hand jogged up, leading their horses.
“They’re burning a witch,” Guillot said, being careful not to slur his words. He could feel the first hints of sobriety returning. “They were building the pyre last night when we got in.”
“That’s not like the Intelligenciers.”
“It’s not them. It’s the locals. As best I could tell, the duke isn’t even involved.”
Dal Sason muttered something under his breath that Guillot couldn’t quite make out. Gill could feel his anger rise. He knew only too well what it was like to be on the receiving end of mob justice. For some reason, this morning, the thought of what was about to happen resonated with him far more deeply than it had the previous night.
Dal Sason studied him. “This is none of our business,” he said. “Things like this can get nasty fast, and we don’t have time for that.”
“It’s already gotten nasty,” Guillot said, hauling himself into the saddle.
“A good soldier follows his orders and doesn’t get sidetracked. You can’t allow your personal feelings to interfere. We’ve more important matters to deal with.”
Guillot could tell dal Sason wasn’t speaking out of fear, but rather out of a belief that his mission was more pressing than a woman’s life. He shrugged. “I suppose I never was a particularly good soldier.” He urged his horse forward.
“What’s going on here?” he said when he reached the group of people gathered at the pyre, who surrounded a young woman wearing a black cloak. Guillot could see a wisp of red hair protruding from the hood, and a few links of the chain that shackled her hands. Even though a black robe covered her, Guillot could tell she was shaking.
“Burning a witch,” one of them said.
The man very much fitted Gill’s mental image of a mob member, with an expression of feverish excitement and righteousness on his face. He had probably never experienced any type of power before. Now he was drunk on it.
“That much I know,” Guillot said. “On whose authority?”
“On ours!” the townsman said.
The crowd behind him roared in agreement. Their blood was up and they wanted to see someone die, and soon. He needed to be careful to ensure it wasn’t him.
He laughed, feigning levity. “I’m afraid that really isn’t good enough, unless you’re a royal magistrate. Are you a royal magistrate?”
“No. Are you?”
“Are you, my Lord,” Guillot said, allowing the angry edge to return to his voice and accompanying it with as damning a glare as he could muster. “As it happens, I’m not. But I am Banneret of the White Guillot dal Villerauvais, Seigneur of Villerauvais, Chevalier of the Silver Circle, and former champion to King Boudain the Ninth. Those titles and duties give me the power of life or death over every free man and woman of Mirabaya.”
Dal Sason appeared at his side, his horse as agitated as its rider. “We should leave.”
Guillot glared at him, then turned back to the gathered crowd. “She should receive a fair trial.”
The townsman stared at him. “Witches don’t get trials. They could use their magic to get off. She’s a witch for sure.”
“Could you tell that from the sinister black cloak she wears?” Guillot said.
Several people in the crowd laughed.
“Don’t matter,” the man said. “We’re doing the king’s work.”
“It’s not your place to decide what the king’s work is.”
The man shut his mouth, and for a moment, Gill thought he was cowed. Then he spoke again.
“Arnoul saw her doing magic.”
“Arnoul?” Guillot said. He looked about the crowd. “Which one of you is Arnoul?”
The townsman pointed to one of the men holding the robed woman.
“You saw her do magic?” Guillot said.
The man—Arnoul—nodded.
“What magic?”
The crowd grew silent.
“I, I saw her…” Arnoul’s voice was low and hesitant. He looked around for support, but received none. He took a deep breath. “I saw her turn into a goat!”
The crowd gasped.
“A goat?” Guillot said, with as much disdain as he could muster.
“A goat,” Arnoul said, more confident now.
“Has anyone else seen her do magic?” Guillot said.
Silence.
“This woman’s family?” Guillot said. “Where are they? Where is her husband?”
“She only moved to Trelain a few months ago. No husband or family,” the townsman said.
“I see. And Arnoul is a long and upstanding member of the community?”
The townsman nodded. “Master of the Tanners’ Guild.”
Guillot shook his head in exaggerated disgust. “Draw back her hood.”
“We can’t, my Lord,” the townsman said. “She’ll hex the whole town. Put the evil eye on us.”
“Rubbish,” Guillot said. “Show me her face.”
The man hesitated for a moment before walking over and drawing back the woman’s hood. There was a collective gasp and some of the people in the crowd flinched. Revealed, the woman seemed to be in her late twenties, with burnished copper hair. Her pale skin was lightly freckled and her eyes were crystal blue. She was beautiful. Guillot wondered how many times the woman had rejected Arnoul’s advances before he’d levelled
these claims against her.
“Let me summarise,” Guillot said. “On the word of one man, a man with a face like a dog’s arse…” He paused for the crowd’s laughter—a crowd rarely failed to laugh at a nobleman’s joke—and took a moment to enjoy seeing Arnoul squirm. He wanted to make sure the mood was cheerful. “… you are willing to burn a young woman to death. That doesn’t sound like the king’s work to me. That sounds like murder.” He looked around. None of the men seemed quite so confident now.
“There’s only one way to deal with murderers,” Guillot said. “And the king expects me to carry out that task in his name.” He rested his hand on the pommel of his sword.
Arnoul looked around at the others, most of whom refused to meet his eye, then back at Guillot. Guillot ignored him, looking instead at the woman, whose face now displayed the hope that she might live. Finally, Guillot looked back to the townsman.
“Well? What will it be?”
“What would you have us do, my Lord?”
Guillot’s heart raced. If the crowd turned ugly, no amount of titles would save him and dal Sason from the same fate the young woman faced. Many in the crowd—perhaps all of them—still believed Arnoul, but were afraid to speak out. They thought she was a witch, and they wanted justice, so he had to give them something to ensure an easy escape.
“Release her to my custody,” Guillot said. “My companion and I are on our way to Mirabay. We’ll hand her over to the Intelligenciers there. If she’s a witch, you can be certain they’ll find her out. She will see justice—on that, you have my word.”
There were some murmurs in the crowd, but Guillot could not tell if they were favourable. For the time being, however, he was a lord, and his word was law. They were too conditioned to take orders from their betters to immediately question him. They might, eventually.
“Very well, my Lord,” the townsman said.
Arnoul’s face turned puce, and Guillot knew that as soon as he was out of earshot, the scorned man would start to agitate against him. Then things would get dangerous.
Dragonslayer (The Dragonslayer) Page 7