Dragonspeaker Chronicles Box Set

by Patty Jansen

  “You know who has been asking about you? That guard, Henrik is his name, isn’t it?”

  Nellie’s heart jumped. “What did he want to know?”

  “He was concerned and wanted to know where he could find you. He was sitting right where you are now. I had to tell him I had no idea where you were.”

  “Tell him I’m safe.”

  “But where are you sleeping? Not in the poorhouse, I hope?”

  “No. There are a lot of empty shops and warehouses in the artisan quarter.”

  “Whoa, that’s a creepy place.”

  “It is, but it’s dry and the people who abandoned those buildings didn’t always take all their things with them.”

  “So can I tell him that? You’re in the artisan quarter?”

  “Oh. I don’t know . . .” It felt embarrassing, and she didn’t want Henrik to see her living like a pauper.

  “Why not? There is clearly something going on between you and him.”

  “No, there is not,” Nellie said. “And anyway, I don’t work here anymore, I live with outcasts and homeless people. I’m a pauper. Why would he be interested in me?”

  “Because he is. Why won’t you talk about it?”

  “Because I have better things to do. Like making sure we don’t starve to death.”

  “But he could vouch for you so you could have your position back. I don’t understand.”

  Because they didn’t know about the dragon box. It was tempting to come back here, but Nellie knew it would never last. Once it became known she had stolen the box, maybe she would be blamed for Lord Verdonck’s death. After all, she had visited his room and had given him herbs. If Madame Sabine wanted, she could easily blame Nellie.

  She put her empty cup down. “I better go before it gets light and too many people get up.”

  Dora nodded at the hessian bag that now sat at the end of the table, bulging with wrapped leftovers from the pantry. “Take that. Come back every day if you want. I don’t understand you, but we’ll help anyway.”

  “Thank you.” Nellie hope that one day she could explain everything, and they would all sit around the table and have a good laugh about it. For now, though, that time seemed further away than ever.

  She picked up the bag and went back outside into cold. The wind came straight from the snow-covered forests of the east and bit into her skin. It was going to be a cold winter. The Regent should not squander food from the stores for the sake of buying his way to the throne. They would need that food later in the year.

  By the first of dawn light, Nellie walked through the dark alley around the side of the palace and back into the forecourt.

  The guards at the gate said nothing and let her pass unhindered.

  Nellie crossed the marketplace where a few stallholders had arrived. They were talking to each other in the glow of a street lamp and appeared to be watching something.

  Two men stood at the door to the main church, one with a light while the second nailed a sheet of paper to the church door.

  Nellie stopped next to the merchants.

  “What are they doing?” she asked.

  “You tell me, missy,” a man said, while rubbing his gloved hands.

  The man with the hammer had finished his job. The other man lifted the lantern to look at the paper. And then, satisfied with their job, the two came down the church steps.

  Nellie thought she recognised one of them: he was one of the city guards who worked for the mayor.

  They greeted the group of merchants watching and turned into the street.

  A couple of the merchants climbed the steps and Nellie followed. By now, it was light enough to read the text on the paper, written in plain script.

  It said:

  Declaration.

  Henceforth the following shall be forbidden:

  All activities that involve magic.

  The possession of objects that involve magic.

  The plying of craft that uses magic.

  Persons found to be in breach of these conditions shall be arrested.

  Regent Bernard.

  Chapter 4

  NELLIE WALKED BACK through the streets of the city to the artisan quarter. When she came past the shops, people were still unaware of that horrible piece of paper on the church door. That piece of paper that would make their activities illegal.

  Most of the shop owners and many of the carpenters, tailors, bakers and anyone who plied a handicraft had limited amounts of magic. At least the ones who were good at it.

  She wasn’t sure why the Regent’s aimed to get rid of all the craftspeople in the city. If no one was left to bake the bread, how would people eat? If all the musicians left, then who would play at his banquets? Who would cook? Who would build houses? Who would make beautiful furniture? Who would sail ships? Anyone could get a team of sea cows and let them drag a barge up the river, but to sail across the sea, navigate the treacherous sand bars without running aground, that required wind magic.

  Maybe the Regent had a plan that non-magical people he approved of would replace them, but he didn’t appreciate the amount of craft required to be a baker or a carpenter, and that to do well in those trades, a magical affinity with the subject was almost required. Regent Bernard came from Burovia. Wasn’t magic much more accepted there? It made no sense.

  The people opening their shops for the day’s trade knew nothing of the Regent’s declaration. Here and there, guards stood in groups. They were not palace guards in royal livery but city guards in blue, young men who assisted the city council in maintaining safety in return for the city council assisting their families. Not as well-trained, and not as well-equipped either.

  Some spoke to each other. A lot of them were young. One of them was asking a superior questions, and the patrol leader replied in a curt voice: “We wait for that to happen, all right? I told you before, I don’t know.”

  No, they weren’t happy with this latest development. They might have their orders but were probably waiting for the citizens to be given the chance to read the Regent’s declaration and make their own decision to leave. The guards would prefer that, because it meant less work for them and, besides, the prisons were already full.

  Nellie ran into a crowd of onlookers gathered in a square.

  The town crier stood on a stone pedestal ringing his bell. His voice echoed between the surrounding houses.

  “By decree of the Regent, all magic shall henceforth be forbidden in the city. Anyone who has any magical ability, or is in possession of any magical objects, shall now be required to notify the guards and to hand in the offending objects. Their choice is to leave the city or be arrested.”

  The message was short and, when he finished and rang his bell, he was besieged with questions.

  Nellie couldn’t hear what the citizens asked him, but he shouted out, “I am only a town crier. I didn’t make the decision. I’m repeating to you what the palace has told me to say. I don’t know why the Regent made this decision. If you want to know, I suggest you go up to the palace and ask. I don’t know.”

  Several citizens called him an idiot and a sell-out.

  “The Queen would never have allowed this!” a man called out.

  “I agree. Long live the queen.”

  Except the queen was dead.

  The poor town crier looked increasingly uncomfortable. He glanced over the heads of the people to the guards at the edge of the square. They had not moved, so far.

  In the tumult, he raised the paper and started again, because more people were coming out of their houses.

  It was only a matter of time before someone would throw rotten eggs.

  Nellie continued down the street.

  The distressed face of the poor town crier made her think about Henrik again.

  If one got a coveted spot in the prestigious palace guards, for how long should you keep the position if you were ordered to do things you found cruel? For how long did you trust that the institution you served had the best inter
ests of the country and its citizens in mind?

  Her father had been in the same position with the church. As their accountant, he saw how the church spent its money. He didn’t agree, but did that mean he should stop being an accountant for the church? Did it even mean he could do that if he wanted? Because he had a family to feed.

  It was all easy saying self-righteous things if you were just a bystander.

  She’d said nothing about the Regent’s banquets either, because she needed to work, just like her father had.

  For now, she had to warn the other women. Zelda clearly had some magic, and probably so did some of the others. And then there was that issue of having a whopping great big dragon in the warehouse and the dragon box that was in Nellie’s bag. They needed to hide all those things, although how she would hide a dragon that refused to go back into its box, Nellie wasn’t sure.

  Nellie turned into the alley that led to the courtyard surrounded on three sides by warehouses. Since she was carrying the bag of bread and other supplies, Nellie was welcomed with cheers.

  A lusty fire burned in the fire pit. Steam rose from the tin that served as kettle and that hung over the fire. The women had set up a temporary table made of two kegs and a couple of planks of wood and had set out bowls in which Mina was ladling porridge for the children.

  Seeing them all lined up and attacking their food as soon as Mina set the steaming bowl before them almost made Nellie cry. These children with their pale faces and bright eyes deserved better than this. They deserved better than to learn how to beg.

  The children finished in no time and scrambled up the ladder to the hayloft.

  Nellie watched them go, still feeling uncomfortable that she had no idea what the dragon ate.

  Mina handed her a bowl of porridge. It was watery in substance, since they didn’t have milk; and they didn’t have sugar, but it was warm and filling.

  No one said much while they ate.

  Nellie had dumped her bag onto the table and Koby, having eaten with the children, piled up the contents on the table.

  Dora had slipped in two loaves of fresh bread and a chunk of ham. And cheese. It was a good haul.

  Jantien brought the tin they used as a teapot and the collection of dirty and chipped cups. She poured steaming tea into the cups and the remaining water into the porridge pan where the porridge she could not scrape out had already congealed on the sides.

  Nellie wrapped her hands around the warm cup, knowing she would have to upset these women again to tell them about the Regent’s decree. She started in a soft voice. “On the way back from the palace, I saw two men putting a decree from the Regent on the church door.”

  Emmie and Zelda gave her sharp looks. Emmie looked worried, but Zelda’s expression was foul. In the past days, she had gone from wanting to use Nellie as a fake herb woman to keeping her out of her workshop.

  “What did this paper say?” Mina asked.

  “It said that everyone who uses magic and who has artefacts of magic will be arrested.”

  Zelda snorted. “No matter what King or Queen or Regent in the palace, they always put up these silly pieces of paper. It is like this: they need us, they don’t want us in their city. They’re afraid. They say we steal. They’re afraid that we teach the citizens superstition. Church doesn’t like superstition.”

  Nellie assumed that by us she meant magicians. Magic was strong in the wayfarers and this might even be why they weren’t welcome in so many towns. They weren’t welcome in Saardam either, but their numbers were too great for the guards to expel them without a fuss.

  “I don’t know what their reason for putting it up is either, but there are many guards around,” Nellie said. “I saw them waiting on street corners ready to search houses and question people.”

  Zelda snorted again. “They do that every couple of years. They make a fuss. They go blah-blah-blah evil magic blah-blah-blah hand in your stuff. Nothing ever comes of it.”

  Nellie didn’t believe that. For one, when King Roald had been in the palace, he had never issued a decree for all people with magic to hand themselves in.

  But she didn’t want to argue. “Whatever you believe, we can’t afford any more trouble. First, the Regent thinks you have stolen things, and they take all your possessions. Next they come in and drive you out of the safety of the church. And now they want to scare us away.”

  “I’m not scared,” Zelda said She crossed her arms over her chest. “We look after ourselves. We always have. We don’t need Regent to say yes or no, we can do this or can’t do that. Regent know nothing about us.”

  “I only want to warn you that there are guards around and they might come in here. Is that a bad thing?”

  “Not a bad thing,” Agatha said. “But something like that happens a lot around here. Did you see the town crier?”

  “I did.”

  “He’s out there every morning blathering about stuff the Regent says. People bring their rotten eggs just because he says the same thing every day. It’s all just rubbish from the Regent. Did you hear about the one where he was going to declare himself king?”

  Several of the women laughed.

  This was not the type of reaction Nellie had expected. Why wouldn’t they understand that this was serious? Maybe when your life was constantly in peril, you grew numb from threats like these.

  She tried again. “I still think we need to hide the things we don’t want them to find. If they find magical items, we’ll be put in jail. If they find we have magic, they’ll arrest us.”

  Agatha huffed. “We got no magic.”

  Right. One didn’t go there with her.

  Agatha continued, “Why are you telling us this anyway?”

  “I want to warn you,” Nellie said. “Just so that we know who to be most careful about.”

  Agatha snorted again. “You come in here, and because you’ve helped us out in the past, you think we should be so grateful that we drop to our knees to worship the ground you walk on?”

  “I don’t think that at all!” What was wrong with these women?

  Agatha said, “Yes, you do. That’s typical for these people from the palace. You think you can boss us around while you bring danger to our children—”

  Jantien interrupted, “Please, stop, Agatha. She’s not bringing danger—”

  “Yes, she is. Remember where she comes from: the palace. She has friends there. She is a danger to all of us, with her . . .” She glared up to the hayloft where children’s voices drifted down, mingled with the soft snoring of the dragon. “If there is anyone who’s a danger to us, she is. She has no right to warn us or boss us around.”

  She tightened her arms over her chest.

  Nellie’s cheeks grew hot. Agatha was right about the dragon. “I’ll have to try again to get him back in his box.”

  “Good luck with that.”

  Nellie finished her tea in silence. For now, Agatha had won the discussion and Agatha seemed very much into winning things.

  What had she expected when she joined this group of women to whom she had been bringing leftovers from the palace? Eternal gratitude? No, but more friendliness than this.

  Even the suggestion that she would tell anyone at the palace rankled her. As if the palace would care about this group of ragtag women, some of whom might have a bit of magic. As if she were that type of person. She might not be perfect—nobody was—but to suggest that she would betray the group was an affront to her personality.

  She was only trying to help.

  In the straw, by the makeshift mattresses and the scratchy horse blankets in the former stable, she found the satchel that she had taken from the palace, with her father’s book and the dragon box inside.

  She brushed the dust off, and took it up into the hayloft.

  The children had collected all the loose hay into a giant heap and had dragged blankets onto it, to the dismay of Jantien, who complained that the children looked like farm boys covered in straw.

  But
Nellie suspected it was quite warm, especially so because the dragon lay in the middle of the heap, with his legs bent at the knees, and tail and neck curled around his body. He opened an eye when Nellie came to the loft, but then closed it again.

  The children sat on the wooden floor, playing a game with pebbles that involved rolling them across the floorboards. Anneke and her brother Bas were there as well as Koby and Ewout and all the other children.

  “Come and play with us, Nellie,” Bas said. He shuffled aside to make room for her.

  “No, I’m sad to say I can’t. I would like your friend to help me. He needs to hide.”

  “Boots?”

  Nellie laughed. “Is that what you call the dragon?”

  Anneke said, “Yes, it’s like he’s wearing boots, because his feet are darker than the rest of him.”

  “Well then, I’m going to have to ask Boots to go back into his box.”

  “No! He keeps us warm.”

  “It may not be necessary for a long time, but there are guards looking for magical things. I want him to hide.”

  Watched by the children with wide eyes, she produced the box from the satchel.

  The dragon jerked his head up. His eyes were suddenly bright and round, the irises vicious orange.

  “I don’t think he likes it,” Bas said.

  No, the dragon didn’t like it at all. To be honest, she wouldn’t like it either, having been locked up inside the box for the best part of twenty years.

  “You have to help us,” Nellie said to the dragon. “I’m sorry, I need you to go back inside so we can all be safe.”

  She opened the box.

  The dragon’s head shot up further. A puff of smoke blew out of its nostrils.

  “There are guards looking for you. They will kill you and kill us if they find you here. You don’t want to go back into the church crypt, do you?”

  She had no idea whether the dragon understood what she said. So she took a step forward.

  Now the dragon jumped to his feet. His tail waved around, narrowly missing the heads of some of the children.