Servant of the Crown

by Duncan M. Hamilton

  From there she had ascended vertically, and Pharadon could only guess that the woman whose scent filled his nostrils was responsible for having the goldscale hauled out, and away. He clambered out of the antechamber, his claws tearing away more soil and rotted boards from the edges of the opening as he pulled his bulk back to the surface. The trail led straight back toward the city.

  Pharadon frowned. He’d hoped never to have to return to that place. Aside from anything, it stank. That didn’t even take into account the danger he was risking, going there in human form, with most of his powers unavailable. Although the thought occurred to him, he couldn’t bear to consider the possibility that the goldscale might have been killed. He could tell by the scent that she had still lived when they took her from this place. That was hope enough.

  Alive or not, though, it wouldn’t make any difference. The coin anchored her to the Fount, and ensured she drew the sustenance she needed in her slumber. Without that magical bond, she would die. He wondered what the humans had in mind for her. As he stared in the direction of the distant city, he was reminded of the fear of being the last of his kind.

  It was something he found difficult to comprehend. Dragonkind were so long-lived. They had never been as numerous as humans, but with lives measured in centuries rather than decades, their population had been a healthy one. To think he might now be the last—a thought he had been able to avoid since waking due to the presence of the three young dragons. He couldn’t sense the goldscale now, only the fading trace of the scent she had left as she passed.

  There was no choice but to go to the city. What could he hope to achieve, though? In human form, he was feeble. While he was in his natural dragon form, every weapon in the city would be turned against him, and powerful as he was, that was too much for him to hope to defeat. Another way was needed. It occurred to him that if war was on its way, that might make it easier to free the goldscale—confusion and battle would obscure his actions.

  That the people bringing the war to the city owed him a favour made the plan all the more appealing. Efforts could be coordinated to maximise his chances for success. However, that did not change the main reason he had left the humans as quickly as he could. Pharadon had no desire to be used as a weapon of war.

  The image of a fire-breathing dragon flying over a city, incinerating all below, was the last thing he wanted humans to have burned into their memories. If there were a thousand dragons in the world, it would have been less of a concern, but given his assumption that there were only two, he did not wish to increase the human desire to hunt and eradicate anything they saw as a threat.

  If he was to rescue the goldscale, it had to be as a human. That meant he would need as much help as he could get. Getting it without having to fight in their war might prove a far more difficult proposition. First, he had to make sure the goldscale didn’t die before the rescue could be effected; where, he wondered, might he most easily find another gold coin?

  * * *

  No one really knew how to contain a dragon, least of all Ysabeau. Yet that was the task her father had set her. She’d managed a couple of hours’ sleep before there was a bang on her door and a new set of orders in her hand. No rest for the wicked, she supposed.

  They had placed the dragon in the centre of the floor of one of the city’s many open-air fencing arenas, then drafted every smith and craftsman in the city to build a cage around it. The one saving grace was that the beast remained in a deep slumber, no different from an oversize babe in a crib. Other than the fact that at any moment this babe might wake and slaughter her and all the workmen. It had been difficult to convince them to go anywhere near it at first, but with promises of money, and threats of flogging, she got them to work.

  There was a great deal of prefabricated material in the city already, so it didn’t take long for the preliminary skeleton of a domed cage to be welded together. Workmen were toiling hard to add bands of metal to the bare framework, to ultimately create something that would prevent the dragon from getting out and any overly inquisitive fool from getting in.

  Ysabeau surveyed the ironworks with satisfaction. Her father intended this creature to be the great showpiece of his achievements. Her involvement in capturing the beast would go unannounced, but she had no difficulty with that, so long as the rewards still came. The old wooden benches built into the arena’s stone tiers were being removed, to later be replaced with a gallery that would afford a clear view of the dragon. For now, though, the priority was getting the cage completed.

  Judging by the crowds who had gathered outside, asking for a glimpse or wanting to know when the spectacle would be open to the public, it seemed her father was using the creature the right way. Whether it would prove enough of a distraction for them from all the other things that were going on was another question.

  She could not dispel a lurking fear that led to images of a rampaging dragon slaughtering, burning, and eating Mirabay’s citizens. Ysabeau looked over the strips of riveted and welded iron that in theory provided solid containment while allowing the citizens an unobstructed view. In purely physical terms, she was happy to take the word of the engineers who had designed it in record time, and the smiths who were busily welding and riveting the structure together, but there was more to it than that.

  A dragon was not simply a strong beast. They were creatures of magic, and when that was added to the mix, there could be no certainties. She’d seen more than enough to know that magic could turn the most solid understanding of the world on its head. This was a creature of the old magic, not the diluted form she and the Spurriers played with. Her father might be capable of near-limitless feats now that he had drunk from the Cup she had brought back from the temple, but for the first time in that which she’d known him, he was displaying remarkable restraint in testing his gifts. Was old age teaching him patience, she wondered, or fear?

  She supposed she would be the same. Such power could be daunting for anyone, particularly when you knew the power was as dangerous to you as it was to others. One way or the other, Ysabeau was glad he was demonstrating prudence. If the etchings were true, he had power equivalent to that of Amatus, the First Mage, who had helped found the Empire. Given time, her father could achieve truly great things. Too much haste, and he could prove correct every fear people had about the use of magic.

  Would fate grant him the time and patience for the former? Her gut twisted with nausea when she thought of it, but then again, she had ever been a pessimist. She forced her attention back to the cage. The responsibility her father had placed on her carried with it the safety of every soul in the city. If the dragon woke and got out, it was unlikely to be happy with its captors.

  The smiths had sworn blind that they’d forged the strongest steel that could be had, that a herd of stampeding Jaharan elephants couldn’t break through. She’d seen a Jaharan elephant in the city’s menagerie when she was a child. It was a fantastic beast, but it paled into insignificance next to a dragon. And it couldn’t work magic.

  Ysabeau reached out and touched a bar of the cage with her index finger. She pressed against it, and true to their claims, it didn’t yield any flex. She opened her mind to the Fount and channelled energy into her desire to bend the metal. The rivets and welds surrounding her chosen spot groaned and the metal flexed. Releasing her hold on the Fount, she took her hand away.

  The surrounding section of the cage had warped in, as though it had been struck a great blow. If she could bend it, with her limited magical ability, the dragon would shatter it as though it were made of glass. They needed to do more to safeguard the populace. There was no question that Ysabeau had killed many times, but everyone who met their end at her hand had deserved it in some fashion. The deaths of countless innocent men, women, and children was not something she wanted on her conscience.

  Fear tickled her flesh with its icy-cold fingers as she considered the problem. How could they hold it within these confines when it woke? She paced along the stone steps
, squeezing her chin between thumb and forefinger in agitation. She couldn’t cast a spell to add a magical barrier to the physical one. She neither knew how nor had the power. Her father had the power, but he didn’t know how either.

  Shielding spells were within her ambit, but they were subtly different, and when it came to magic, a subtle difference was more than enough to make something utterly useless. Here they wanted to keep something in rather than out. It would also need to be permanent, and not connected to the caster. The rational part of her mind said that might not even be possible, but she knew that when it came to magic, the only limiting factors were the power they could draw on, mental discipline, and the caster’s imagination.

  The more complicated the magic, the more defined the thought processes required to achieve it. It would take them months, if not years, to work out how to create magic the like of which was needed here. That couldn’t be the solution—they didn’t have the time.

  If only they had a limitless supply of Telastrian steel … For reasons that remained a complete mystery to Ysabeau, the famed metal had a strange relationship with magic, and in her experience could not be affected by it. It was an idle thought, however. They could melt down every Telastrian blade in the kingdom, and still not have enough to make a cage even a quarter the size of the one they had now.

  She added chewing her lip to her list of agitated ticks as she began her second circuit of the cage. A thought occurred to her. Perhaps they didn’t need the cage to be entirely made of Telastrian steel.…

  She smiled and stopped squeezing her chin. It would mean confiscating a few swords, which wouldn’t be popular, but being popular was certainly not a claim her father could make.

  CHAPTER

  28

  “Food supply to the city has been interrupted, your Grace.”

  Amaury regarded his new chancellor with tired eyes. Grand Burgess Girard Voclain was a competent businessman who had crawled his way out of the slums around the docks on ambition and ability, so Amaury knew the problem was not his fault. It was the king’s whoreson cousins, carousing around the countryside at the head of their little armies, stealing whatever caught their eyes.

  “How much is getting to the city?” Amaury said.

  “Less than ten percent of normal.”

  Troubles were mounting faster than the Prince Bishop could deal with them. It was as if everyone were trying to sabotage him. Probably they were. He needed time to show them all the good he could do, that he was the right man to lead them, but he was beginning to fear he would never get that opportunity.

  “How much supply do we have in the granaries?”

  “Two weeks. Perhaps twice that with rationing, but that won’t make the citizens happy.”

  “The citizens are only happy when they’ve got something to be unhappy about,” Amaury said bitterly.

  Voclain gave him a crooked look, to which Amaury replied with an apologetic nod. They both knew where ignoring the citizenry’s mood could lead, and acting recklessly would lose Amaury the support of the men he relied on the most. No one wanted to meet their end swinging from a gibbet or resting on the headsman’s block.

  “Keep the rations at the usual level,” Amaury said. “We can review again in a few days if supplies haven’t returned to normal. What’s next?”

  The new commander of the Royal Army stood up. There were so many new faces around that it took Amaury a moment to remember his name. Duchain. General Didier Duchain. The commander of his old Guard. Amaury tried to recall why he hadn’t migrated over to the Spurriers, but could not.

  “The uptake on the mercenary contracts we put out has been less than expected,” Duchain said.

  Amaury let out a strained breath. “How much less than expected?” He’d hoped they’d all be taken up.

  Duchain swallowed hard. “Three-quarters, give or take, but I’m hopeful that more will sign up in the coming days. I’m in correspondence with one captain who seems to think he can put together a force of nearly ten thousand men. If that’s the case, our needs will be met easily. It seems all the talk of dragons and magic has put off the bigger companies. Lots of less risky work to be had; for instance, the Auracians are at each other again, according to the latest.”

  “Auracians,” Amaury said. He stood from behind his desk, his instinct being to walk to his window, as he so often did when considering new troubles. However, he had relocated to the king’s offices and no longer had that luxury. He hesitated a moment, and then, feeling slightly foolish, sat back down. This is not how it was supposed to be, he thought.

  “What’s the status of the Royal Army?”

  Duchain grimaced. Would he ever be the bearer of good news? Amaury wondered.

  “The Royal Army was not in a good state of readiness, what with it being several years since the last war. Desertions stand at a little over fifty percent.”

  “So what you’re telling me is, that if I had to fight a battle in the morning, which right now looks like it could very well happen, I’d lose.”

  Duchain nodded with a solemn expression, then took a deep breath before speaking. “I don’t think you would be able to field a battle-effective force, your Grace.”

  Amaury smiled thinly. It was all he could do to stop himself swearing to the heavens. The way sentiment in the city was heading, he needed what troops he had to maintain order. To take them out of the city to fight a battle might mean facing a city in revolt when he returned.

  There remained the bigger problem of the king. Even if Solène couldn’t undo whatever it was he had done to the king’s mind, so long as Boudain lived, he remained a rallying point for the opposition. Not to mention, it emphasised the tenuous legality of Amaury’s regency.

  That was something he needed to address, and soon. By taking up arms, the king’s cousins had made themselves useless to the Prince Bishop. The more distant relatives didn’t have a strong enough claim to the throne for Amaury to place any of them upon that seat. As much as he had given up on the idea of wielding power from behind someone else, the fact that the option was no longer available was oddly comforting—it was one less difficult decision to make. Or to get wrong.

  With the king—incapable or not—in someone else’s hands, Amaury needed to firm up his rule. Regent wasn’t enough anymore. Whoever had Boudain could easily cook up a forged document and claim that it superseded the one putting Amaury in control.

  “Before we close business for the morning, gentlemen,” Amaury said, “there’s one more matter I wish to raise. With the king kidnapped, the regency, not to mention the kingdom itself, has been placed in a position of great jeopardy.”

  He scanned the faces of the men before him for any reaction. He didn’t know if he was fooling anyone or whether he was fooling only himself. They showed no signs of disbelief, so he continued.

  “In order to ensure the good management of Mirabaya and the safety of her subjects, stronger measures will be needed until the king has been recovered. With this in mind, I intend to propose the following interim measure.”

  He slid a piece of paper toward the seated officials. They looked at one another until Duchain took the initiative and picked up the document.

  “Appointment as Lord Protector of the Realm?” Duchain said.

  “Precisely,” Amaury said. “A temporary measure to ensure consistent governance and keep the throne secure for the king and his ultimate successor.”

  Amaury leaned back in his chair and gave them a moment to digest the idea. These were his men. If they didn’t go for it, no one would. He knew it was too soon to declare himself permanent ruler. He needed to weather the current storm, and then, in a year or two, with fewer threats on his doorstep, he could push through whatever was needed to make him prince of the realm, as well as prince of the church.

  “It seems to make sense, your Grace,” Duchain said. “Any old bandit could forge the king’s signature now.”

  “Precisely,” Amaury said. “The document also outlines the m
echanism by which the protectorate reverts to a regency, and from there to a kingdom, but that’s all simple enough.” He paused to gather his thoughts. “There may be some pushback on this, from any number of quarters, but it’s important that we make clear how vital this measure is for the kingdom’s prosperity.”

  * * *

  Pharadon wasn’t sure what to make of the scene before him. He stood, uncomfortable and weakened in human form, staring at a sign proudly announcing that in a matter of days, the Regent of Mirabaya would proudly unveil the greatest trophy of war the nation had ever known. A captive dragon, alive, but cowed by the greatness of Mirabaya’s power and by the prowess of the Order of the Golden Spur. People wandered past, some stopping to read the sign. One or two passed comment, but Pharadon ignored them. He was in no mood for conversation.

  Although he could go no farther than the external wall of the incipient menagerie, he didn’t need to see the goldscale with his own eyes to know she was there, to know that she was suffering. As he allowed his senses to drift beyond his body, he felt her heartbeat as if it were his own, but slow and strained, as though each great thump threatened to demand too much from her frail body. She didn’t even seem to be aware of his presence. Her state pained him—emotion raged within, not something to which he was accustomed.

  He was filled with the overwhelming desire to return to dragon form and tear the goldscale from her cage. He knew that was folly. There were many humans in the city, many soldiers. He needed time to recover from this transformation before he could attempt another. Freeing her and lifting her away would take far longer, and attract much more attention, than rescuing an enfeebled king on a misty day. He would be shot from the sky and cut to pieces. As tempting as it was to try, Pharadon knew it was a reckless act doomed to fail. Not only would the goldscale descend into barbarity, she would die before she’d ever had the chance to live.