“Is there somewhere near we can stop for the night,” Leverre asked, “or should we start looking for somewhere to make camp?”
“There’s a coaching inn not far ahead,” Guillot said. “Last one before Trelain. After that we’ll be roughing it.”
“How far ahead?” Leverre said.
“Don’t trust me?”
“Just wondering is all,” Leverre said. “Like to have an idea of things in my head.”
“You’ll see it over the next rise. I’m sure you’ll love it.”
“I’m sure I will.”
Guillot wondered if he was friendlier when he was drunk. Leverre had not done anything bad to Guillot, yet Guillot had taken an instant dislike to him. That Leverre was the Prince Bishop’s man counted for some of Gill’s antipathy—perhaps all—but if they were going to work and fight together, Guillot knew he had to get past that. He wondered, though, if that was all that bothered him, or if there was more to it. Though the connection to the Prince Bishop clouded his judgement, that didn’t mean there wasn’t something else to be wary of. Was he being paranoid, or was there something in the cold, impassive way Leverre looked at him? They would be relying on one another for their lives before too much longer; if it was all in Guillot’s head, he needed to get over it.
True to his word, the inn came into view as soon as they crested the next rise on the muddy road. The weather had clearly been bad there not long before, but they had been lucky so far and had missed the worst of it. Rain had kept the road quiet, with few travellers choosing to venture out. Once word of the dragon attacks spread, Gill was sure the roads would be clogged with people fleeing the area.
With Trelain being a major town, and the seat of a duke, there were a number of coaching inns along the road between it and Mirabay. The distance between them was, for the most part, a day’s travel by carriage. They became less useful when you were on horseback and trying to make good time—in Guillot’s experience, it always seemed to get dark when you were exactly halfway between two stopping points. On this occasion, however, he had timed it well. They would have warm, dry beds for the night and Guillot would have one last opportunity to abuse the Prince Bishop’s bank balance.
With the sun setting, the innkeeper had clearly not been expecting any more customers. The sleepy establishment burst into life when they arrived, although their less than luxurious mode of transport meant he showed then straight to a communal bunk room.
Guillot looked the room over and grimaced in distaste. “I don’t think this will do,” he said. “We’ll need individual rooms. The best available.”
Dal Sason cast him a sideways glance, but Guillot had been abusing the Prince Bishop’s funds enough for him not to show too much surprise. The innkeeper nodded eagerly, not about to turn away the extra money. He showed Guillot to a room farther down the corridor: small but well turned out, the type of thing a travelling merchant might choose.
“I like to have space about me,” Guillot said.
“I have just the thing,” the innkeeper said, his smile broadening.
They continued down the corridor to a room at the back of the inn. Farthest from the road, it would be the quietist and thus the most expensive. The innkeeper opened the door with visible pride, so Guillot made a show of looking around and nodding with approval.
“This will do perfectly,” he said.
The room ran the full length of the back of the inn; its lead-latticed windows looked out over the small kitchen garden behind. The bed sat at one end and the remainder of the space was filled with a small two-seater sofa and a coffee table sitting on a drab rug. Guillot waited until the innkeeper had left, closing the door after him, then dropped his travelling bag on the end of the bed and let out a sigh. He couldn’t have cared less about the room—he had slept on the floor, in the gutter, and in various spots on the street between Jeanne’s tavern and his house. What he wanted now was space and privacy.
The bed was inviting after the long ride, but he had to resist the temptation. He removed his armour—a difficult but not impossible task to accomplish alone—and stretched his aching muscles. He needed his body to get used to the plate again, and wearing it was the only way to do that. Once he had loosened some of the knots in his shoulders, he pushed the couch and coffee table up against the wall. After a moment of deliberation, he got down on his hunkers and rolled up the rug before placing it to the side. That done, he took his sword from its scabbard and started doing what was known in the Academy as “the positions.”
From the age of five or six until his early twenties, every day had started with the positions. It was a slow and methodical progression through guards, attacks, and defences, the focus being on controlled, precise movement at a reduced pace. Over time, the movements became second nature, and when needed at speed, they would be clean, accurate, and hopefully lethal. At his peak, Guillot had even added positions of his own devising to his routine. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d done them.
Studying his feet, he made small adjustments to their position until they were where he wanted them. There was a time when they would have naturally fallen into the correct spots, but that was no longer the case. He flexed his knees and winced at the creaking sounds they made. The position felt strained and unnatural and he knew he could not blame his hours in the saddle for that.
He raised his sword hand and took his guard. The tip of his rapier bobbed about like it had a mind of its own, where once it would have been perfectly still. He tried to console himself with the thought that it was impossible for all his skill to come back to him in an instant, but he was on his way to try to slay a dragon and he didn’t have much time to get back in shape.
He started to work through the positions, which were so firmly ingrained on his memory that he would never forget them, no matter how much he drank or how much time had passed. His form was ugly. His blade waved about like a piece of cloth flapping on the wind. If he tried to thrust, he was confident only that he would be able to hit the wall in front of him.
After only a few minutes, he sweated from the effort. His forearm screamed under the strain of a sword that felt made from lead. His form, already poor, worsened with fatigue, so he stopped to take a break. He slumped down on the sofa and allowed the tip of his sword to bite into the floorboards. At least the dragon won’t be using a sword, he thought. The thought made him smile, but only for a moment. How could he have allowed himself to sink so low?
He had never set out to drink himself to death. It had helped ease the pain in the days after Auroré’s death, but those days had seemed to run on and on, into months and years. The moment had never come when he thought it was time to stop. Might it now be too late?
CHAPTER 20
Solène felt nervous every step of the way to the palace. The power of the Prince Bishop frightened her, but she was more afraid of the Intelligenciers and a repeat of her experience in Trelain. She knew she couldn’t expect to be so lucky a second time, and the Order was the only place she could find safety. There was no way to know what she was getting herself into, but the unknown seemed like a promising alternative to the world she already knew.
At the palace gate, she was stopped and had to wait for word to be sent to the Prince Bishop. To her surprise, he arrived in person a few moments later, followed by a retinue including two men in the cream robes.