He wiped his mouth on the napkin, and with one more amused glance at the stable boy’s efforts to adapt to his new role as curator, tour guide, and guardian, Guillot headed for Solène’s room. He had no idea how long it was possible for someone to sleep, but he couldn’t leave her there forever.
He knocked, and she bade him enter. She was sitting up and had opened the curtains, but didn’t look as though the rest had refreshed her much.
“I was beginning to think you’d never wake up,” Guillot said.
She smiled, but it looked forced.
“How late is it?”
“Nearly midday.”
“What’s all the commotion outside?”
“Word’s gotten out about the dragon,” Guillot said. “Everyone wants to take a look.”
“You should charge them,” she said.
Guillot blushed and shrugged. “Is there anything I can get you?”
“If you could send up something to eat? I’m starving. I don’t really feel up to going to the dining room.”
“I’ll send down to the kitchen. Anything in particular?”
“Hot and lots of it.”
Guillot laughed.
“Have you heard anything from Mirabay?”
“No. Word of what we did will get there soon enough. It always does.”
“What do you think he’s going to do?”
There was only one person she could be talking about. “Who knows? Maybe he’ll try to kill me again. I knew he hated me, but I didn’t realise he’d kept that flame burning for so long. Maybe he’ll forget about me again when something more interesting comes along.”
“What is there between you two?”
Gill rubbed his face with a mixture of jadedness and frustration. “It’s ancient history. He blames me for ending his career as a swordsman. It was his own fault, though. He got injured while trying to do something he shouldn’t have. All things considered, I’d have been within my rights to cut him down for it. I was willing to let it lie. He should have, too. Once word of the dragon’s death gets out, I don’t think he’ll be able to touch me. Not for a while, at least, and that’ll be long enough to disappear.”
“Are you going to go after him for trying to kill you?”
Gill shrugged. “I thought I would, but now? I don’t see much point in it. I’ll likely only get myself killed in the process, and for what?”
“You don’t think what he’s trying to do with magic is dangerous?”
Gill let out a sigh. “Yes and no. If the people keeping an eye on things are like you, I’m a lot less worried. It seems like magic is coming back one way or the other. The tyrant of Ostia was said to be using it. I’ve heard rumours that it’s being used in the south. It’s best that the power is controlled and that the right people do that.”
“You think the Prince Bishop is the right person?”
“Maybe. Maybe not,” he said with a shrug. “Who am I to say? In any event, it’s not my fight. I dealt with the dragon. I’ve done my part. Other fights are for other people. I’m tired.”
They sat in silence for a moment, and Gill was about to get up and fetch her some food when she spoke again.
“Tell me how it felt. The fire.”
Gill thought for a moment. “Like nothing more than a blast of warm air. It was the strangest thing. Magic.” He shrugged again. “I have to admit I thought I was done for. I think the dragon did too. There was more to it, though I might just be imagining some of it.
“One I’m pretty sure of—when we rode into the valley, I could feel the dragon. It was like something was tugging on me, on the very fibre of my being, showing me what direction to go in to find it.”
“That makes sense,” she said. “Maybe that’s how the old Chevaliers tracked the dragons down.”
“That’s what I thought too,” Gill said. “Anyhow, I know you’re hungry. I’ll go and get you something to eat.”
Music floated through the salons and lounges of the opulent townhouse in an upmarket part of Lanham, the capital of Humberland. Katherine dal Drenham navigated from room to room, making polite small talk with the good and great of society who had been lucky enough to warrant an invite. Hers had come because of the never explicitly stated, but very much implied, untruth that she was the new mistress of the Prince of Humberland. It was a convenient falsehood. One of many, such as her name, and everything else about her.
Katherine’s employer, the Duke of Bowingdon, had started the rumours, and a young, newly arrived nobody had suddenly become someone important enough to earn an invite to the autumn ball of Grand Burgess Whitly. When she stopped to chat, she carefully gave only hints as to who she was and where she came from. She was beautiful enough to be forgiven her obliqueness, and obviously intelligent enough to create an aura of mystery. For those harder to influence, she had other talents, ones that could see her burned at the stake, and on one occasion very nearly did.
In Mirabaya, the burgesses—some of them wealthy beyond belief, even richer than some of the aristocracy—knew their place. They were commoners—rich commoners perhaps, but commoners nonetheless. In Humberland, it was very different, and it was something Katherine—or Ysabeau dal Fleurat, as she was more properly called—struggled to come to terms with. To see a grand burgess play host to people whose ancestors had been ennobled by an emperor, to treat them as his equals, was jarring. For a duke to need her services to get an edge on a commoner was astonishing. Nonetheless, that was the way they did things in Humberland, and it meant she was able to make a good living while in her self-imposed exile.
The ball was a lavish affair. Grand Burgess Whitly was doing his best to impress, and to make it seem effortless and perfectly normal. If he was as wealthy as rumoured, perhaps it was. He held the monopoly on the trade in tea with Jahar. It wasn’t a drink Ysabeau had managed to acquire a taste for, but the Humberlanders couldn’t get enough of it and the monopoly was worth a fortune. Unfortunately for Whitly, her employer had set his heart on controlling the tea trade, and in Humberland, as in Mirabaya, it was rare for a nobleman of Bowingdon’s influence not to get his way. He was also not one to negotiate a deal on the matter—he took the things he wanted.
Ysabeau watched the guests doing what guests at such parties always did—trying to be seen, to appear wealthier and more sophisticated than they were, to make connections with those more influential than themselves. There was hardly anyone present who didn’t have an agenda, and Ysabeau was no different. She built a mental map of the house as she moved about under the guise of social grace, identifying where she could get out should things go wrong, and trying to locate the grand burgess’s study.
Somewhere within the house—most likely in the study, she reckoned—there was a ledger book that outlined the dealings between Grand Burgess Whitly and a Mirabayan merchant of note. It was more than a simple ledger, however. It was the history—in numbers and lists of items—of how Grand Burgess Whitly became one of the wealthiest men in the kingdom. In a mercantile nation like Humberland, enterprise such as Whitly’s was lauded. But not when someone’s chief trading partner was a land with which the kingdom was at war. That was very different. That was why the ledger book was kept at the house, rather than in Whitly’s offices, overlooking the quays from which his merchant ships departed. During this evening’s festivities, Ysabeau had to discover where the book was kept, obtain it, and bring it to the duke, who would use it to pick over Whitly’s empire, seizing the juiciest portions for himself.