The Dragon King

by Patty Jansen

  Meanwhile, August yelled to someone in the next room, “Bring us two plates and some good food.”

  He gestured to some empty tables and seats. “Sit down.”

  Nellie and Henrik sat.

  A number of the men came to join them, and one of the women, too. They wanted to know what had happened, and Henrik told them his version of events.

  They looked at Nellie with admiration. Henrik said several times that the prisoner escape plan had been her idea, and that he had only watched from the shadows. “But I knew that once they were out in the open, they needed a big distraction to let them get away.”

  August nodded. “It was a big distraction all right.”

  “The Regent’s death has caused quite a lot of trouble, even if I can’t fault your action,” another man said. “I’ve been itching to shoot that man. How can he betray his own wife like that? And then to drown her in front of his sons. No wonder the boys misbehave.”

  August said, “Yes, but one way or another this has probably hastened the process of finding a permanent solution. The boy regent won’t last.”

  Everyone around the table nodded.

  “Now we only have to make sure that it’s a permanent solution that’s to the benefit of the citizens.” The man who said this sounded cynical.

  Another man said, “At this point, anything except the brat will do. Someone needs to take him down.”

  An older man said, “He’s a brat, but he doesn’t deserve to die. It’s our task to protect him and we will, until such time as he commits crimes, or sins against his family or advisors.”

  Several people laughed. One said, “What advisors? A bunch of adolescents who hold drunken meetings on how best to screw each other, with live demonstrations? There are women in this room, but I could tell you things—”

  “I assure you, Cees, there is nothing you can say that I don’t already know,” one of the women said from near the hearth. Her voice was quite dark.

  Nellie knew the man. He was also a guard at the palace.

  “That still doesn’t make it right or appropriate to discuss the details. Believe me, people don’t need to know anything except that the young boy has become utterly corrupted by his obsession with pleasures of the flesh.”

  “As do most adolescent boys,” the woman said.

  The man gave a snort. Nellie realised she also knew the woman. She had been one of the long string of women the Regent had burned through while finding a governess for his sons.

  The woman continued, “I just hope that it can be resolved without too many deaths or people losing their homes.”

  “Is there anyone left in the palace who has influence on Casper?” Henrik asked.

  The guard Cees said, “The Shepherd could control him, if he wanted, but instead, he appears to be egging him on, bringing books about obscene subjects, and the boy is just lapping it up.”

  By the Triune, he was talking about the books from the secret library in the crypt. Nellie felt sick.

  Not only that, it didn’t fit with the picture she had formed from Casper’s polite and well-written letters to Adalbert Verdonck asking for help.

  What if Casper was much smarter than he let himself appear? He had spent the past ten years watching his father and the nobles of the city do a delicate dance with the shepherd, and losing the fight at each step. He might even, because of Lord Verdonck, be suspicious of the shepherd. Coming from Burovia, where magic was much more common, he might suspect that magic was involved.

  He had watched the spectacle in the harbour from an upstairs window. He might have seen the fire dog and recognised it for what it was.

  But Nellie didn’t say anything about this to these people.

  August was saying, “The brat is not the issue. His days are probably numbered, with the way he behaves. It’s all by design that he is allowed to behave like this. Several people have tried to steer him into more adult behaviour, but the shepherd won’t let anyone near him. He lets the boy free reign. He can misbehave however he wants. He has proven throughout his short life that he’s well capable of upsetting a great number of people. He is ill mannered and rude to everyone, from the servants to the nobles to the rulers of the neighbouring countries. He doesn’t know or doesn’t understand how to behave. The shepherd is allowing this to take place, because he knows that Casper will make himself so hated that someone will kill him soon enough. And then, when the country descends into chaos, when all the nobles are fighting each other over who is going to sit on the throne, the shepherd will step up as the saviour of the town. I know that a lot of us have experience with who the shepherd really is, and what he does, but he is still enormously popular with a lot of the people who go to the church and are happy to follow his teachings. The church is full whenever he preaches. The people lap up his sermons about the evil of magic, because they like to blame someone for their situation. They don’t know any of the things that we know.”

  Several people gave solemn nods.

  A young man came out of the other door, carrying two plates with fresh bread, fried eggs and ham and pieces of roast vegetables. It smelled heavenly.

  “Your own produce?” Nellie asked.

  “The family of one of our members has a farm. This food is as fresh as you can get it.”

  That wasn’t the reason Nellie asked. The food was also untouched by magic.

  While they ate, the men talked about Casper’s recent tricks, which included teaching the noble son who the boss was by letting him run naked in the palace forecourt.

  “If it wasn’t so sad, it would be funny,” August said.

  The door opened and a man came in. He was very tall, wore dark clothing including a long cloak, and had his grey hair in a ponytail.

  Several people rose and offered him their seats.

  “Henrik.” The man crossed the room and clapped Henrik on the shoulder.

  Henrik made the introductions. “Nellie, this is Master Thiele, secret guild master. This is Nellie Dreessen, the Dragonspeaker.”

  “Please, you’re embarrassing me,” Nellie said.

  “Not at all. You have brought us many steps forward. We waited and observed for years, wondering how we were going to get into the crypt to rescue the boy.”

  “Surely, you could have just cut through the metal?”

  “We could, but without reasonable cause to do so, we would be committing a crime and incur the anger of the church which, in turn, would anger the citizens; and it might have led to ugly situations, both for ourselves, for the boy, and for the city. We always do what is in the best interests of the greatest number of people, which isn’t always the same as what seems right.”

  “Well, we have a problem now,” Henrik said. “Because our prince has gone missing.”

  “Yes. And when you’re finished eating, you must come to my office and we can talk.”

  Nellie and Henrik quickly finished eating, and then the two of them followed Master Thiele out of the room back into the dark corridor and up the stairs into another corridor where it was very cold.

  He opened a door and let them into a firelit office. The room was quite large and well appointed with a big desk, a couple of easy chairs around the fire, and many bookcases full of big, heavy leather-bound tomes.

  “Sit down,” he said, gesturing at the chairs.

  There were only two, and Nellie felt a little embarrassed to take the last one, but he pulled the chair from behind his desk and sat on that one.

  “Now tell us what has happened,” he said.

  Henrik told in a few sentences how they had fled with Bruno, but how he had been impatient and angry and Henrik had been unable to control him.

  “I am sorry. I have failed. The boy is strong willed and it’s not easy to subdue his impatience. I fear I may have endangered all of us.”

  Master Thiele folded his hands. “This is what we know so far, but the picture is incomplete. Two days ago, in the early morning, the boy must have arrived in the city. Nobody has
come forward to tell us how he arrived. It happened in the very early morning when citizens were asleep. The first records we have that anything was amiss were reports from merchants arriving at the markets that there was a black sooty trail across the pavement leading from the open church doors. It became weaker the further away from the church it got, but appeared to lead to the palace. Not a single person has come forward who knows how this trail was made.”

  “What about what happened in the church?” Henrik asked.

  “We know little. The church has always preferred to keep church matters to itself. None of the city guards ever got to investigate the cause of the fire in the crypts, for example. They don’t like officers pouring over their affairs.”

  “But you’ve gone inside and looked at the damage, I’m sure?”

  “Oh, we have, but although I have ideas about what may have happened, we have no witness accounts, and it’s not in our interest to speculate.”

  “So how did you know Bruno was in the city?”

  “One of our members spotted him in the palace with young Casper and the other young nobles before the guards were no longer allowed inside and the doors were locked. He said . . .” Master Thiele reached out to his desk and grabbed a piece of paper. “He said that he saw a boy, fourteen or fifteen years of age, thin and pale, with night black hair and dark eyes. He sat at the table next to Casper, holding a wooden box of some sort on his lap. His cheek was bruised and the skin on his right hand bore blisters.”

  Nellie nodded. “We suspected Bruno might have fled into the palace.”

  “What do you think happened?” Master Thiele asked. “You know him better than any of us.”

  Henrik sighed. “I was training the boy because I felt it was a good idea, because he needed to do something. He was still quite weak and by no means ready for any kind of fight. Frequently when we were training, he would ask me questions about the palace and the church and when we were going back there. He told me a few times that the first thing he wanted to do was to was to punish the church for locking him up. So we assume that he went to the church and there was a confrontation between him and Shepherd Wilfridus, which he lost, after which he fled to the next place he wanted to go: the palace.”

  “Has anyone seen the shepherd since that day?” Nellie asked.

  Master Thiele shook his head. “From what I understand, the services in the church have been suspended until they can clean it up.”

  Nellie asked, “How many people understood what they saw in the harbour that day? We were at the water, and the fight between the dragon and the fire dog happened quite close to us, but I understand that many people on the shore couldn’t see what was happening. They blame us for the magic.”

  “They do, and to be sure, I have heard no reliable reports on what happened from people on the shore.”

  “I thought it was clear to all who witnessed it that the shepherd is a very strong magician.”

  Master Thiele shook his head. “Not clear at all. We strongly suspected it, and we have been very careful, but we haven’t seen irrefutable proof that will stand up to the scrutiny of a full session of the court of nobles.”

  “I saw it,” Henrik said. “I hope that is enough proof for you.”

  Master Thiele nodded. “You don’t have to convince me, Henrik, you know that.”

  “As directed, I shot at him. I thought I would create confusion to make it look like it was meant to be an assassination of the Regent, but instead I seem to have made things worse rather than better.”

  “You were directed to kill the shepherd?” Nellie asked.

  “We have a very short list of people that are better off dead than alive.”

  Master Thiele gestured at a board on the wall where a couple of names were written in chalk. The list included four names. One of them was Dirk Gouwens, which was the proper name of Shepherd Wilfridus. Nellie didn’t know the other men. They were likely to be common criminals.

  “Did you have that much evidence against him?”

  “The man has a long string of common crimes, involving theft from bereaved widows and organising a network of peddlers and magicians to defraud ordinary citizens.”

  A memory came to Nellie’s mind. “Zelda, the wayfarer.”

  “She is part of it. She gives him a lot of money for the sales of her wares that at best don’t work. We are still dealing with complaints from her dragon ointment. You should see the injuries that some people got all over their skin. But those potions and pills are full of magic. We’ve been in contact with the Science Guild to establish that.”

  And then Nellie realised something else. “You used to be part of the King’s Guard. Whenever people had a complaint about misconduct by guards or military, they requested an audience with the King’s Guard. You would investigate to see if there was a reason to take them to task.”

  “That’s right. Only, when the Regent came in, he wanted none of our meddling, as he said, so he disbanded us. As it turned out, the Regent had nothing to say about this but the shepherd didn’t want any of it either, for obvious reasons. That man has a list of crimes longer than my arm. I could list all of them, but I would be here all night. We have no way of sending him to jail, because the citizens adore him.”

  “So you have him up on that board because he is a common criminal or because he’s a magician?”

  “For his criminal pursuits. We strongly suspected there was something else going on, but he is smart and he doesn’t make it obvious to anyone who doesn’t have to know.”

  “But that’s why people adore him: because he uses magic to make people support him.”

  Nellie then told him about what she and Gisele had learned about the gin poisoned through magic.

  Master Thiele gave her a wide-eyed look. “I strongly suspected that the Shepherd had something to do with Lord Verdonck’s death. It’s not a secret that he hated the man, and he was too obviously offering for us to test the monastery’s wine, as if he wanted us to find something there.”

  “A man was sentenced to death because supposedly the wine was poisoned,” Nellie said.

  Master Thiele nodded. “I’m beginning to see what’s been going on. I spoke to Commander Patrick of the palace guards, and he gave me no reason I could believe to convict the Regent’s former taster. I didn’t understand how he had come to the conclusion that the taster was guilty, even when it was clear the wine was not poisoned. He was also unable to explain it to me. I should have taken that as a strong sign that something important was amiss.”

  “You make and eat your own food here,” Nellie said. “That has saved you from being afflicted with magic. The others have all eaten at the palace.”

  Master Thiele let out a heavy breath. “Every time when I think things are bad, they keep getting worse. So what can we do to get the boy out of the palace? Time is of essence. Not only do I have no idea how he is going to survive this, but when his father contacts us, we want to avoid a severe embarrassment.”

  “You’re still in contact with his father?” Nellie said.

  “He writes to us, once or twice a year. We write back to him, saying that everything is still as it was before, which is that the Prince is held somewhere in the church and that we haven’t been able to free him.”

  “Well, now he’s free.”

  “He is, but he may be in more danger than being mistreated. The church clearly had a reason to keep him alive, otherwise they would have killed him or let him starve to death long ago. The boy clearly has a strong constitution, because otherwise he would have succumbed to disease. The church had plans for him, and we have disrupted those plans, so they are likely to do something dramatic. I dread the day that we have to tell his father that he’s gone. I would dread to tell the country that their best heir to the throne is dead.”

  “What are you going to do?” Henrik asked.

  “I don’t think we have any option but to get into the palace by force and free the boys to make sure nothing bad happens to th
em.”

  Henrik gave him a sharp look. “Would you stand against other guards?”

  “If necessary, but only if we absolutely can’t avoid it and if we have enough support to guarantee everyone’s survival. We’re not into suicide missions.”

  “You do know that all of them are likely to be influenced by magic?” Nellie said.

  “We know, but that can’t be helped at the moment. To reverse those effects, we would need a magician. We don’t have one, and we don’t have the time to look for one, at least not before we can break this situation with the youngsters locked in the palace ballroom.”

  “Can I help?” Henrik asked.

  “Thank you. We will start in the morning. First we need to get our men together to see if we have the numbers to overwhelm the palace guards. We’ll send out our men in the morning. No use sending out anyone now.”

  “This is essentially a mutiny.” Henrik’s face was grave.

  “Hopefully, one that people can see is for the good of their city, but make no mistake, it will be dangerous. We’ve tried to avoid stepping out of the shadows like this. One mistake, and plenty of people can kill you, even my own men. Be here in the morning, and sleep well. I presume you have somewhere to stay?”

  “My eldest daughter’s house,” Henrik said.

  “All right then. Have a good rest.”

  On the way down the stairs, Nellie wondered if this was what being a spy was like.

  Chapter 16

  * * *

  NELLIE AND HENRIK walked through the harbour and then into a street along the canals.

  Henrik’s family was not terribly rich, but they were not poor either. They lived in a house one block back from the canal, in a respectable street, where the neighbours worked in the trades or were employees for the larger companies. Warm light radiated from the windows, and the scent of wood fires hung in the air.

  Nellie hid in the collar of her coat. She longed to be warm again.