After a moment she heard noise from inside, then the door creaked open.
“What is it?” Leverre said, looking ruffled.
“I’m sorry to disturb you, Commander, but I wanted to ask you a few things.”
For a moment she thought he was going to turn her away, but then he nodded, although he did not move to let her in.
“You’re certain Guillot wasn’t hurt? It’s just that, well, I don’t have very many people I can call a friend, and I’m worried about him.”
Leverre nodded. “He had barely a scratch on him when I left them in Trelain.”
“Where is he, exactly?”
He frowned, and she worried that she’d overstepped the mark.
“The Black Drake. It’s a classy spot, so I doubt he’ll get himself into any trouble there unless he goes looking for it.”
“And the beast?”
“Guillot got one good cut at it, but that’s about it. I expect the injury won’t bother it for too long.”
Solène grimaced. It wasn’t much for the cost of four lives. “I’m sorry about your people.”
“Our people, Sister.”
Solène smiled. “Of course. But I didn’t know them.”
“The Order and its members are intended for dangerous work. When we join, we accept the fact that one day our duties may cost us our lives. For them, that day came. For the rest of us, it’s waiting out there.”
“Still, it can never be easy.”
“It isn’t.”
Silence fell—Solène felt awkward but Leverre seemed comfortable. Feeling she had exhausted him as an avenue for information, she turned, preparing to leave.
“You really do care for him, don’t you,” Leverre said before she could take a step.
“He saved my life when I was nothing but a stranger in a bad situation,” she said. “So yes, I do.”
“He saved mine, too,” Leverre said. His face was knotted as though he was struggling with a difficult thought. “Men are on their way to Trelain to kill him,” he blurted out.
“What?” Solène said, allowing her surprise to conceal the fact that he had confirmed her worst suspicion.
“It’s complicated, but the Prince Bishop wants Guillot’s failure to be complete, so he can bring the Order out into the open as the country’s saviour.”
“And for complete failure he needs Gill dead?”
Leverre nodded slowly, his face twisting into an uncomfortable grimace.
“Why are you telling me?”
“Because it’s the right thing to do. I was supposed to make sure he didn’t come back from the cave alive. But that wasn’t the right thing to do, so I didn’t do it. What are you going to do now that you know?”
“I’m going to warn him,” Solène said, incredulous at the idea that there was anything else to do. His eyes narrowed. “I wouldn’t recommend trying to stop me.”
Leverre’s face split into a weary smile, the first time she had seen him look anything other than sullen. “I’ve no intention of trying to stop you. I wouldn’t have told you if I was going to. It’ll mean going against the Prince Bishop. That mightn’t go so well for you.”
The reality of her intended action had not escaped her, but she had chosen not to think about that. “I know,” she said, at last allowing the fact that she could not return to the Priory, or the safety of the Order, to sink in. She would have to go back to her old life, constantly looking over her shoulder—now with one of the most powerful men in the country as her enemy.
“If we’re to beat the men the Prince Bishop has sent to Trelain, we’ll need to get moving.”
“What do you mean we?” Solène said.
“Like I said, he saved my life too. I owe him more than sending a slip of a girl to give him a warning.”
She glowered at him, but he didn’t seem to notice.
“Get some travelling rations together for both of us, and anything else that you need,” he said. “Keep it to a minimum, though. We’ll need to move fast. Meet me at the stables in fifteen minutes.”
CHAPTER 38
Gill returned to the underground chamber as soon as he woke the next day. He discovered another door at the back of what he was coming to think of as a nave, tucked behind the statues depicting the ceremony. He tried to ignore the judgemental stares of the marble Chevaliers as he investigated the new doors. All the while, he was plagued by the question of what a replica of the little cup he had found in a dragon’s cave was doing in a chapel under his family home.
Though it was dry and cool down there—its suitability for storing wine was not lost on him—the newly discovered wooden door had grown far more brittle than the one he had forced open to get into the chapel. At a firm push, it splintered from its hinges, clattering to the ground with an echoing din and such a cloud of dust that Guillot coughed and spluttered before retreating into the larger room until it subsided.
At first he thought the new space was empty, but after the air cleared a little more, he could make out plaques lining the wall. That they were funerary was immediately obvious to him—he had seen their like many times before, including in the family mausoleum that now lay in a pile of rubble somewhere above his head. He held his torch up to the nearest plaque, engraved with finely chiselled lettering in a language he could not read. The letter forms were similar to those he knew, but distorted. The spellings were strange, with letters clustered together in unusual ways. He tried sounding out the words but they refused to make sense.
The next plaque was the same, as was the third. He was about to curse when he spotted something he recognised on the fourth plaque—a name he knew. Valdamar. It sent a chill down his spine. The lettering was odd, but when he looked past that, the word was there, as clear as day, dancing in the flickering red light of his torch.
There wasn’t a boy or girl in Mirabaya who didn’t know that name. Valdamar—Blade of the Morning Mist. One of the most famous of the dragon-slaying Chevaliers, Guillot could remember his father telling him at least a dozen stories about Valdamar. One for each of the dragons he was reputed to have slain. He was said to have come from a rural province, one known for being misty and mysterious, but more importantly, one known for being plagued by dragons. It occurred to Guillot that Villerauvais was almost perpetually shrouded in mist in spring and autumn. He had never considered a connection before, but now? What was someone like Valdamar doing buried here? While there was a family legend about descent from one of the founders of the Silver Circle, Valdamar had lived later, during the fall of the Empire and the early days of the kingdom. He was one of the last great Imperial Knights. After his generation, the Silver Circle became what Guillot knew it as.
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?