Aurora nodded. “I’m familiar with the legend.”
“It’s not legend, it’s history,” said Infidel. “Brightmoon killed Verdant, who had been weakened by the decimation of the forests near his lair. The blood of the beast was drained and dried, forming a dark green powder. A gilded casket of this blood was kept at the Brightmoon Cathedral. When Knights of the Book are initiated, they’re given a spoonful of the stuff, dissolved in wine. It grants them a small measure of the dragon’s strength and toughness.”
“Blood magic,” said Aurora. “I thought the church disapproved of such things.”
“The Church is just a wealth of contradictions,” said Infidel. “They preach peace, then raise armies of violent tempered men to impose it. They sing the virtues of forgiveness and mercy, but build torture chambers to focus the faith of those who’ve gone astray. Dabbling in blood magic is a sin for you and me, but priests don’t have to play by the same rules. Since they decree what is and isn’t a sin, a priest could eat babies and pick his teeth with the bones and still be praised for his rectitude.”
“I’m starting to see how you earned the name ‘Infidel.’”
Infidel shook her head. “The church doesn’t give a damn about my opinions. It’s my actions that put me on the naughty list. When I was fifteen, I stole their casket of dragon blood. Knights had been gobbling down this stuff for centuries, so it was almost gone, but there was still about a pound of it caked up in the corners. I went at it with my fingernails and polished off everything that was left. At first, I didn’t think anything had happened to me. When the priest came to get me from the inner sanctum, he found me crouched down over the empty casket, blood caked around my lips and under my finger nails. The sleeves of my wedding gown were green with — ”
“Wait,” said Aurora, holding up her hand. “Wedding gown? Is this part of the story about you once being engaged to Lord Tower?”
Infidel pressed her lips tightly together, as if contemplating whether to say more. After several long seconds, she said, “Engaged isn’t the right word. It implies that he asked me to marry him and I said yes. The truth isn’t so pretty. I was sold to him.”
Aurora raised her eyebrows.
“My birth name was Innocent Brightmoon. I was the king’s third daughter, but the first to survive to breeding age.”
“A princess,” said Aurora.
“It’s not as good a job as it sounds,” said Infidel. “‘Princess’ is just a fancy label for a high-priced slave-whore. My wedding to the firstborn male heir of the Tower family had been arranged before I was born. The Towers were immensely wealthy; there were all sorts of political and economic reasons that the Tower and Brightmoon lines were fated to mingle. My father had decided that his first eligible daughter would marry the first eligible son of the Tower family, and that was that. No one ever asked my opinion on the matter.”
“Still…” said Aurora. “You were born into luxury. Life couldn’t have been all bad.”
“Couldn’t it?” Infidel asked. She sighed. “I guess, from the outside, it looked like I was living a life of wealth. But, it wasn’t my wealth, or my life. I was little more than a doll, a pretty thing to be dressed in gowns and decorate my father’s court. I was never allowed to make a single decision. I lived in a palace where court dinners were held, with meals literally fit for a king, and all I’d be given to eat would be a meager salad. I wasn’t allowed to taste dessert because my wedding gown had been designed before I was even conceived, and it was important that my waist be slender enough that I might get mistaken for a wasp. I never wore shackles, but I was a prisoner all the same.”
Aurora nodded. “So you decided to run away.”
“I wish I could say my actions were that deliberate. My education, such as it was, didn’t teach me much about making good choices. When my wedding day finally came, I could barely think. I felt like a caged rat; my mind was darting all over the place, looking for any escape, but I found nothing.”
“You must have really hated the young Lord Tower.”
Infidel made a gagging noise. “Hated doesn’t begin to cover it. He’s such a sanctimonious idiot; he can’t fart without running to the nearest priest to offer repentance. He believes every lie the church has ever crafted. You wouldn’t believe his awkward, ritualistic attempts to court me. I could tell he really had no choice in this matter either. If he’d been a little rebellious about it, who knows? Maybe I might have liked him. I mean, he was good-looking, and he was always winning jousting tournaments, so he wasn’t without a certain physical charm. But, his attempts to write love poems were cringe inducing. They sounded like sermons! ‘Praise the creator who this day has blessed me with the bounty of your chaste lips, blah blah bluhhh.’” She stuck out her tongue. “We never even held hands.”
Somehow, my ghost heart felt lighter to learn this. Since hearing she’d been engaged to Lord Tower, I’d assumed that she must have loved him once. I was jealous, though, obviously, there was no rational basis for this. I found myself annoyed that she was spilling her guts so freely to Aurora. I’d been her closest companion for ages. Why had she never shared this with me? Worse, why had I never had the courage to ask?
Infidel continued her story, “Anyway, it was my wedding day. There’s this ten minute ritual before the ceremony where the bride goes to the inner sanctum to pray in private; there’s not even a priest present. The inner sanctum was where they kept the casket of dragon blood. The second the priest closed the door, my eyes fixed on it. It was locked, but it was also a thousand freakin’ years old. I had it cracked open in about thirty seconds. And, like I said, when the high priest came back into the sanctuary, I was coated in the stuff. I’d gobbled it down like it was all the ice cream and cake that I’d been denied since I was a toddler.”
Aurora chuckled softly. “You must have been a sight in your bloodied gown.”
“To this day, I still don’t like wearing green,” said Infidel, with a small shudder. “I get bad flashbacks of looking down at the green coating my arms. The priest stared at me for about half a minute, just dumbfounded, then clenched his fists and came at me, shouting, ‘What have you done? What have you done?’ Even though I’d never hit anyone in my life, I gave him a backhanded slap to shut him up. And… um… and… and his face sort of caved in. After that, I kind of… I kind of snapped. I launched out of the inner sanctum and tore through anyone in my way. I jumped out a stained glass window and kept running. I killed… I killed a lot of people on my way out of town. There might have been a puppy that got squished as well. I… my memory’s fuzzy, and I don’t like to think about it anyway. I was completely drunk on the blood. It’s one reason I seldom drink now. I don’t like feeling out-of-control. Anyway, long story short, I wandered around the islands for a couple of years getting my head straight before winding up in Commonground. It’s been a while since any of the church’s assassins came after me, but I’m guessing I’m still public enemy number one.”
“Which makes it strange that you want to sign on to the king’s dragon hunt,” said Aurora. “Won’t Tower recognize you?”
Infidel shrugged. “Who knows? I was just a girl back then. I have boobs now.” She ran her hands along her ruined hair. “And, you know, a different haircut.”
“Father Ver is with him,” said Aurora.
Infidel pressed her lips together tightly. If I’d still had arms, I would have hugged her to console her. I knew what she was thinking. A few extra curves and a dragon-induced haircut weren’t going to fool the church’s best Truthspeaker. I had personal experience with Father Ver’s powers. Infidel was screwed.
“Why do you want to go on this quest anyway?” asked Aurora. “It can’t be the treasure. You’ve never been obsessed with money.”