She supposed she would be the same. Such power could be daunting for anyone, particularly when you knew the power was as dangerous to you as it was to others. One way or the other, Ysabeau was glad he was demonstrating prudence. If the etchings were true, he had power equivalent to that of Amatus, the First Mage, who had helped found the Empire. Given time, her father could achieve truly great things. Too much haste, and he could prove correct every fear people had about the use of magic.
Would fate grant him the time and patience for the former? Her gut twisted with nausea when she thought of it, but then again, she had ever been a pessimist. She forced her attention back to the cage. The responsibility her father had placed on her carried with it the safety of every soul in the city. If the dragon woke and got out, it was unlikely to be happy with its captors.
The smiths had sworn blind that they’d forged the strongest steel that could be had, that a herd of stampeding Jaharan elephants couldn’t break through. She’d seen a Jaharan elephant in the city’s menagerie when she was a child. It was a fantastic beast, but it paled into insignificance next to a dragon. And it couldn’t work magic.
Ysabeau reached out and touched a bar of the cage with her index finger. She pressed against it, and true to their claims, it didn’t yield any flex. She opened her mind to the Fount and channelled energy into her desire to bend the metal. The rivets and welds surrounding her chosen spot groaned and the metal flexed. Releasing her hold on the Fount, she took her hand away.
The surrounding section of the cage had warped in, as though it had been struck a great blow. If she could bend it, with her limited magical ability, the dragon would shatter it as though it were made of glass. They needed to do more to safeguard the populace. There was no question that Ysabeau had killed many times, but everyone who met their end at her hand had deserved it in some fashion. The deaths of countless innocent men, women, and children was not something she wanted on her conscience.
Fear tickled her flesh with its icy-cold fingers as she considered the problem. How could they hold it within these confines when it woke? She paced along the stone steps, squeezing her chin between thumb and forefinger in agitation. She couldn’t cast a spell to add a magical barrier to the physical one. She neither knew how nor had the power. Her father had the power, but he didn’t know how either.
Shielding spells were within her ambit, but they were subtly different, and when it came to magic, a subtle difference was more than enough to make something utterly useless. Here they wanted to keep something in rather than out. It would also need to be permanent, and not connected to the caster. The rational part of her mind said that might not even be possible, but she knew that when it came to magic, the only limiting factors were the power they could draw on, mental discipline, and the caster’s imagination.
The more complicated the magic, the more defined the thought processes required to achieve it. It would take them months, if not years, to work out how to create magic the like of which was needed here. That couldn’t be the solution—they didn’t have the time.
If only they had a limitless supply of Telastrian steel … For reasons that remained a complete mystery to Ysabeau, the famed metal had a strange relationship with magic, and in her experience could not be affected by it. It was an idle thought, however. They could melt down every Telastrian blade in the kingdom, and still not have enough to make a cage even a quarter the size of the one they had now.
She added chewing her lip to her list of agitated ticks as she began her second circuit of the cage. A thought occurred to her. Perhaps they didn’t need the cage to be entirely made of Telastrian steel.…
She smiled and stopped squeezing her chin. It would mean confiscating a few swords, which wouldn’t be popular, but being popular was certainly not a claim her father could make.
CHAPTER 28
“Food supply to the city has been interrupted, your Grace.”
Amaury regarded his new chancellor with tired eyes. Grand Burgess Girard Voclain was a competent businessman who had crawled his way out of the slums around the docks on ambition and ability, so Amaury knew the problem was not his fault. It was the king’s whoreson cousins, carousing around the countryside at the head of their little armies, stealing whatever caught their eyes.
“How much is getting to the city?” Amaury said.
“Less than ten percent of normal.”
Troubles were mounting faster than the Prince Bishop could deal with them. It was as if everyone were trying to sabotage him. Probably they were. He needed time to show them all the good he could do, that he was the right man to lead them, but he was beginning to fear he would never get that opportunity.
“How much supply do we have in the granaries?”
“Two weeks. Perhaps twice that with rationing, but that won’t make the citizens happy.”
“The citizens are only happy when they’ve got something to be unhappy about,” Amaury said bitterly.
Voclain gave him a crooked look, to which Amaury replied with an apologetic nod. They both knew where ignoring the citizenry’s mood could lead, and acting recklessly would lose Amaury the support of the men he relied on the most. No one wanted to meet their end swinging from a gibbet or resting on the headsman’s block.
“Keep the rations at the usual level,” Amaury said. “We can review again in a few days if supplies haven’t returned to normal. What’s next?”
The new commander of the Royal Army stood up. There were so many new faces around that it took Amaury a moment to remember his name. Duchain. General Didier Duchain. The commander of his old Guard. Amaury tried to recall why he hadn’t migrated over to the Spurriers, but could not.
“The uptake on the mercenary contracts we put out has been less than expected,” Duchain said.
Amaury let out a strained breath. “How much less than expected?” He’d hoped they’d all be taken up.
Duchain swallowed hard. “Three-quarters, give or take, but I’m hopeful that more will sign up in the coming days. I’m in correspondence with one captain who seems to think he can put together a force of nearly ten thousand men. If that’s the case, our needs will be met easily. It seems all the talk of dragons and magic has put off the bigger companies. Lots of less risky work to be had; for instance, the Auracians are at each other again, according to the latest.”
“Auracians,” Amaury said. He stood from behind his desk, his instinct being to walk to his window, as he so often did when considering new troubles. However, he had relocated to the king’s offices and no longer had that luxury. He hesitated a moment, and then, feeling slightly foolish, sat back down. This is not how it was supposed to be, he thought.
“What’s the status of the Royal Army?”
Duchain grimaced. Would he ever be the bearer of good news? Amaury wondered.
“The Royal Army was not in a good state of readiness, what with it being several years since the last war. Desertions stand at a little over fifty percent.”
“So what you’re telling me is, that if I had to fight a battle in the morning, which right now looks like it could very well happen, I’d lose.”