“I saw a witch burned when I was a child,” Leverre said. “I’ll never forget it. I’ve been to war twice. I’ve seen horrible things; friends cut to pieces, a field littered with so many dead it made a butcher’s house smell like a rose garden, but watching that woman die was the worst thing I’ve ever seen. I hoped the Order would change all of that, but I’m not so sure anymore.” He sighed. “I could already do things, you see. Small things—nothing like what I’m told you’re able to do. After the burning, I hid that part of myself, pushed it so far down it was all but gone when the Prince Bishop finally found me.
“I always wondered why he sponsored me for the Academy. My father was a blacksmith. Not too many blacksmith’s sons go to the Academy. I worked hard, almost forgot about the touch, as I used to call it. After the Academy, it was the army. Then, one day, the Prince Bishop called on me, told me he always knew that there was more to me than meets the eye, and brought me into the Order. There were no more than twenty or thirty in it then, a mix of scholars from the university, like Seneschal dal Drezony, soldiers like me, and one or two other talented strays he’d found along the way. Like you, I suppose. No offence.”
Solène laughed. “None taken. Stray describes me pretty well, I think. What did he do for you? Guillot, I mean, when he saved you?”
Leverre took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “In truth, I’m not really sure. I took a bad knock on the head. That monster really rang my bell!” He chuckled. “When sense started to come back, Gill was hauling me into the daylight. Hallot, Quimper, and Eston were dead. Doyenne and dal Sason were still fighting, but she didn’t make it out. Dal Sason wouldn’t have either, if it wasn’t for Gill.”
“He’s an interesting man,” Solène said. “I’d like to get to know him better.” Leverre looked over at her and raised an eyebrow. “I mean, it sounds like he has quite a history.”
Leverre let out a laugh that sounded like a sick dog barking. “He certainly has that. He was once considered the best swordsman in the world. In fact, he was—he won the Competition. If that wasn’t enough, he was the great hero on the third day at Heilsbrun in the Ventish Wars. Led a charge that took a bridge that thousands had died fighting over the previous two days. We might well still be there fighting for it if he hadn’t. Stories of the things men do in battle are usually talked up afterward, but that one wasn’t. I was there. Seeing him go across that bridge, knowing he was a Mirabayan, well, it was really something. Filled you with whatever it takes to convince a man to charge at a pike wall. Charge we did, and run they did. It really was something.”
He had a gentle smile on his face, but he wiped it off as soon as he saw her looking at him.
“He came back from the Ventish Wars a hero. He was a legend by the time he came back from the Szavarian War. I didn’t see action in that one. Then the king had him inducted into the Silver Circle and appointed him royal champion. He married the most beautiful woman in the kingdom, protected the king—what more could a man of arms ask for?” He chuckled. “It was all downhill for him after that, though. He’s lost his wife, his child, his banner. For a man like him, that’s everything. It makes me sick to see what he became, but you can’t blame him for it, I suppose. There’s something ironic in the kingdom having broken its greatest swordsman before it needed him the most, don’t you think?”
This time, Solène raised an eyebrow. “I’m not sure if it would have made any difference.”
“What do you mean?”
“I was doing some research for the Prince Bishop. The old Chevaliers, the dragonslayers, they were magically enhanced. Even then a lot of them were killed, taking on dragons.”
“Killing a dragon is never going to be an easy thing, no matter what advantages you have.”
“What about Gill and the Prince Bishop? What is it between them?”
Leverre shrugged. “I don’t know, aside from the fact that they were friends once. The Prince Bishop is a banneret. Was a swordsman in his youth. Then he got hurt and life took him in a different direction. Not sure when they fell out, but there’s certainly no love lost between them.”
Solène chewed her lip for a moment. “Do you know anything about a cup?”
“A cup?”
“An ancient one. One that might have some magical significance. I’ve seen it called the Amatus Cup, and I think there’s a chance it might still be in Mirabaya somewhere.” She watched him as she spoke, and could tell from his quickly hidden reaction that he knew what she was talking about.
“I don’t…” He took a deep breath and let it out with a sigh. “It’s what we were looking for the first time we went up to the dragon’s cave. When we woke it up.”
Solène’s jaw dropped. She felt her heart race with excitement. Did he have some of the answers she was looking for? “Why were you looking for it?”
“The Prince Bishop wanted it,” Leverre said, with the fervour of a man seeking to unload a great burden. “He said it was vital to the Order’s success. So much of what we’re doing comes from the ancient Imperial documents that he’s dug up that this mission didn’t seem all that unusual. It made sense that there might be something old and hidden out there which would come in useful.”
“What does it do?”
Leverre chuckled. “I didn’t need to know that to find it, so he didn’t tell me.”
“And how were you going to find it? What led you to the cave?” Questions were coming to her faster than her mouth could get them out.
He looked over at her. “You’re all questions. What is it to you?”
“The Prince Bishop wanted me to find information that would help us kill the dragon. I think the Cup might be what we’re looking for.”
Leverre laughed. “Our days of working for the Prince Bishop are well and truly over. Take my word for it. He’s not a man who forgives. Or forgets. Once we’ve warned Gill, we’ll both need to disappear.”
“The beast still needs to be killed,” she said. “Not for him, but for all the people who’ll be slaughtered if someone doesn’t. It might as well be us. We might be able to help Gill do it. The Cup might be of use in that. Is there any chance that we can find it?”
Leverre looked away from her and out to the horizon. “The Prince Bishop told me that it would create an incredibly dense concentration of the Fount, that someone with my familiarity with the Fount would be able to sense it against the background noise of all that energy, whereas a novice wouldn’t. He was right. I could feel it the moment I walked into the dragon’s cave. It was like a tight knot of threads in a sheet of perfectly woven silk.”
“Do you think it’s still up there?”
Leverre laughed. “No. Gill has it. He picked it up when we were in the cave.”
“Guillot has it?” Solène said.
He looked at her, a curious expression on his face. “Yes, he does. I’m certain. I saw him with it. I could feel that same knot of energy coming from it when he showed it to me.”
Solène slumped in her saddle, vacillating between intense feelings of relief and disbelief. If they already had the Cup, perhaps the solution to their problem was close at hand—assuming they could figure out how to use it.
There might be an answer in the archive—or in the books in the Prince Bishop’s office. She would have to turn back now if she wanted to look, leaving Guillot to his fate. There was a chance he would be able to defend himself, but even the greatest swordsman in the world, at his peak, was as vulnerable to an unexpected knife in the back as anyone else.