Dragonspeaker Chronicles Box Set

by Patty Jansen

  A few sensible people had argued that, if only the palace had magicians qualified to train her, it would not have happened, but those voices had soon been drowned by hysteria and extra church services where people would throw all their “magical” possessions onto a bonfire before coming into the church to be “cleansed”.

  It was awful because everyone was afraid the neighbours would tattle on them for having magical heirlooms, which forced families to give up the only items of value they had.

  A chill still crept over Nellie’s back when she thought of the service Shepherd Wilfridus had given at the end of the hearing, when he spoke—no, yelled—red-faced and wide-eyed, of the evil that had pervaded the city that must be expunged and that henceforth all forms of magic must be banned.

  She said, “These hearings are no good for anyone except the men in power. When two men in power go head to head, it can’t be good for anyone.”

  “You said it. If Adalbert Verdonck knew what was good for him, he would shut up and leave town.”

  “There must be a significant amount of money involved.”

  “Or someone else is behind it all. It’s said Adalbert Verdonck is friendly with King Leopold of Burovia and may be paid by him to spy on the Regent.”

  That was one thing Nellie didn’t miss about being close to the rulers of the city: the constant scheming. She desperately did not want to get anywhere near this hearing, and yet she was sure she would be called in.

  In Nellie’s case, there had been no one in Lord Verdonck’s room except the lord, Madame Sabine and the son. One was dead and the other two could hardly be called unbiased witnesses.

  Enough people knew she had the dragon. The jump from there to being able to communicate with him was not big. Then, if the hearing was swayed by the Regent into believing the dragon had killed him, Nellie was a suspect. Even if the hearing decided Lord Verdonck wasn’t killed by the dragon, Nellie would still be a suspect. Because she’d been there, because she had brought herbs, and because she was only a maid and no one would defend her.

  By the Triune, she should stop coming here.

  When she opened the dragon box, when she went into the crypt to check on her father’s words about the things that were down there, when she asked Shepherd Adrianus questions, when she took off her bonnet, when she fled the palace, something had changed in her.

  Gone was the Nellie who kept her head down. If only she could stop grovelling to these people for their leftovers, she would do it. Let the Regent drown in leftover duck sauce.

  She rose and picked up the hessian bag. “Well, I better go, because they’ll be wondering where I am.”

  “Oh, Nellie, we’re always here to help you,” Dora said. “Just between you and me, make sure you have your name registered as a citizen of Saardam.”

  “I already have that. Why?”

  “You didn’t hear this from me: the Regent is about to open the city stores and hand out emergency food to residents.”

  Nellie had also heard that from Josie. “That seems a silly thing to do this early in winter. What is he going to do when winter hits hard? It seems he’s trying too hard to be popular. That’s going to backfire.”

  “Being popular is no doubt part of it. He wants to be crowned king and he can’t do that without support from a good portion of the citizens. But I’ve also heard this from the guards: they’re doing it also because they want the citizens to empty the stores before the less than savoury people in the city have raided the entire stock.”

  Yes, Josie had also spoken about theft. “Is it that bad?”

  “They tell me that increasing the guard level doesn’t stop the thievery, and they’re not sure how the thieves get in. They’re smart robbers, not the average street urchin. If I were you, I would register your names for the hand-outs, and with a bit of luck, you’ll get enough to last the winter.”

  “Thank you for telling me.”

  Nellie hugged Dora.

  Whatever happened, she would love Dora as a sister. One day, life would be better, and Nellie would invite all her friends to the little house she would buy at the edge of town and they would all laugh about it while sitting around the fire in the kitchen.

  Nellie left the kitchen and walked down the narrow passage between the side of the palace and the garden wall.

  It was still dark here, and very cold. Nellie needed to keep her eye on the ground to avoid frozen puddles or sections of slippery snow.

  She didn’t see the person at the end of the passage until the silhouette detached itself from the palace wall. She didn’t know who it was until she smelled the perfume and felt the softness of fleshy arms and the ample bosom against her back, and the hand that grabbed her shawl and pulled her so she could barely move.

  A soft voice said, “I believe you have something that belongs to me.”

  Madame Sabine.

  Her voice sounded sweet, but Nellie did not miss the threatening undertone.

  “Whatever are you talking about?” Nellie said. She struggled against the consort’s grip, much stronger than she would have expected for such a pampered woman.

  “Don’t be stupid. You removed something from Lord Verdonck’s room. Didn’t your parents tell you that stealing can get you into a lot of trouble? You saw a pretty box and thought ‘Let’s take that?’ ”

  “I don’t steal. The dragon was stolen several times. I have documents that prove that he belongs to the church. He was never yours anyway.”

  “He?”

  “You hadn’t even noticed that it was a little boy?”

  Nellie was trembling so much her lips felt stiff. She wished Madame Sabine would let go of her shawl so she could stand straight.

  “You have no business holding onto this thing.”

  “You’re right. Come get him back if you want. I recall last time that didn’t end so happily.”

  Madame Sabine pulled the shawl tighter. Nellie could feel the long nails right through the fabric.

  “Don’t be smart with me.”

  “Or you will sack me from the palace?”

  Madame Sabine let a long, angry silence lapse. Her breath steamed in the cold air.

  Nellie would love to know what went on in Madame Sabine’s head. She would have loved to know what had happened that had given Madame Sabine and her lover Lord Verdonck those scars.

  Finally, Madame Sabine said, “Fine. You win for the time being. But don’t think that we are finished. I do believe we are on the same side, although I would love to set my husband’s guards on you to stop your impertinent behaviour.”

  “That would be a very bad idea.”

  “What business do you have to threaten me? You’re just a kitchen maid.”

  And Nellie was so sick of hearing this that something inside her flipped. In a deep place inside her soul something said enough to being treated as if she were unimportant.

  She spoke in a low voice. “I am a confidante of our beloved queen who was a woman who always considered the citizens of Saardam before herself. I helped our queen drive out the Fire Wizard. I have no magic except my faith in the goodness of people. I have no power except that of the truth of my word. You are the wife of a ruler imposed on us. Your husband eats himself stupid while the citizens go hungry. Your husband persecutes people for stupid reasons just so he can pretend he’s serious about finding a criminal. You can’t even be faithful to your own husband, let alone this country. You stole the dragon box, which belongs to the queen’s youngest child. You have the scars on your back to prove it. I can tell your husband about those scars. I can tell him about your affair and how you were planning to leave the city. I can tell him how you and your lover planned to use the dragon, except that you never figured out how to do it. I can tell the church you stole their dragon. And they would all believe me because it’s the truth. I may be a maid, but I’m not stupid.”

  Madame Sabine let a small, tense silence lapse before she finally let go of Nellie’s shawl.

  “No, I s
ee. You’re not.”

  Nellie tucked her shawl back in its rightful place.

  Madame Sabine continued, “But if you’re going into threats, I have a much better one: I can tell that upstart of an Adalbert Verdonck that you poisoned his father.”

  “And he would know it’s untrue, because he was there both times I visited Lord Verdonck’s room and he will know if you change the story, and he’ll tell everyone you did it. Because I haven’t decided if you and I are on the same side, but you and he are definitely not.”

  It was all bluff, but Madame Sabine said nothing. Her position in the palace was tenuous since neither her husband’s men nor the citizens liked her very much. Nellie didn’t quite understand what game she was playing, but it was a dangerous one.

  Nellie walked into the palace forecourt as quickly as she could, her legs trembling.

  Chapter 8

  IT WAS STILL DARK when Nellie came back to the warehouse to deliver her haul. There were now not as many of them, and breakfast was a sad affair. The children wanted to find “their” dragon, but Mina told them to stay inside the warehouse.

  “We don’t want to lose all of you, too,” she said.

  “But Nellie is going out,” Anneke protested.

  Nellie said, “I am going to look for a safe place for us all to stay, so that the guards don’t come back again.”

  “Then can we have Boots back?”

  “He is a wild creature. I don’t know where he is or what he’s doing, and I can’t make him come back.”

  “But he can come back if he wants?”

  “Of course he can.”

  “You’re not angry with him?”

  “No, I’m not.”

  “Mama is angry with him.”

  Nellie looked around the warehouse, but Agatha had gone out to get more firewood. It wasn’t that strange that the women was angry with the dragon and wanted him to go away. If the dragon had kept quiet—but, then, he had reacted to Jantien’s screams. Another thought: would the dragon have known Jantien was the mother of most of the children? The dragon had listened to her when she spoke of Prince Bruno, and he had seemed to be looking for affection. From her, from children and animals.

  She wished the dragon would just have gone back into the box. It would have saved everyone so much trouble.

  Nellie went out again after breakfast, and walked through the snow-covered streets that were rendered in hues of white and grey, reflecting her mood.

  At the marketplace, she ran into a big group of people congregated around the church steps. They were merchants and ordinary citizens listening to an announcement by the town crier. He had just finished and was rolling up his piece of paper.

  People were throwing him angry comments.

  “I’m sick of this,” a man said. “If someone broke into the stores and stole food, then they should find the thief, not blame us for it.”

  “It doesn’t surprise me one bit,” another man said. “I haven’t noticed the Regent cutting down on his banquets. They eat pheasant and duck and exotic spices and dried fruit. People in the city are hungry. It’s no wonder that some of them take what they need.”

  “Yes, that’s right. Blame the poor because they can’t fight back.”

  The town crier came down the church steps, clutching his roll of paper, not looking at any of his former audience.

  Someone in the crowd yelled, “Oy, do we get a say about what we think of this Regent? He’s got less sense than my ten-year-old son.”

  Someone else said, “Yeah, Queen Johanna would never have feasts in the winter. She knew life is hard for us when the boats can’t come. She would share from the stores, not put guards in front of the door to stop us getting the food that we paid our taxes for.”

  Several people cheered.

  Nellie wrestled through the crowd. She was keen to get out because the situation might get nasty. The atmosphere hummed with anger. “Hand us the thief or the whole city suffers,” was hardly the best way to deal with theft from the stores. These types of thieves were not dumb. Food thieves were the lowest form of thieves, and if people knew who they were, they would have told the guards long ago.

  The streets away from the market place were a lot quieter, especially at the harbour. The winter weather had stopped most of the activities here. Only a few ships still came in from the ocean at the best of times, and the quayside where they normally moored lay empty. Of course right now most of the harbour was taken up by ice.

  Nellie walked along the snow-covered quay. The closer she came to the end of the wharf, the less disturbed the snow. At the end, the only footsteps that disturbed the pristine white were the prints of ducks.

  Beyond the end of the pier that sheltered the harbour with the white-painted lighthouse at the end, the broad delta of the Saar River was grey with mist. In summer, you could see the apple orchards on the other side, but today the shore was barely visible through the mist. The water was calm, with little patches of ice floating downstream.

  This place had been the beginning and end of a lot of her adventures.

  Only a few weeks ago, she had come to the office on the other side of the harbour to receive the box and her father’s book that had been the beginning of this new episode in her life.

  If she thought about all the adventures she’d had, she might be forgiven to think it was her destiny to help great people change things for the better.

  Even in the way the dragon trusted her, he acted like he knew she might lead him to someone who could make a difference. Mistress Julianna had even said so, no matter how much Nellie didn’t believe in superstition and fortune telling.

  Except she was all out of ideas now. All the people she loved had been killed or could not help her. She didn’t even understand what she felt towards Henrik any more. She hated to think he would support the actions of the guards in the last few days, dragging all these poor people to the prisons. What in all the heaven’s name had Jantien done that justified taking her away from her children? The poor little mites.

  What was the Regent trying to do, kill this town with his ridiculous rules about magic?

  She stopped abruptly. She felt like she was being watched.

  In the middle of the harbour was a small area of open water. Something disturbed the surface, a dark glistening creature that made the water ripple. It was too large to be a fish.

  The head of a sea creature came up from the water, its whiskers glittering with drops. It had a blunt snout and small, beady eyes. A sea cow.

  She didn’t believe the sea cow was what she’d felt watching her, but she was glad to see it. Some wild herds lived amongst the muddy seabeds of the Saar river delta, lazily grazing on the weeds that grew in the shallows. You could sometimes see the herds swim across the river as they raised their heads or flippers above the surface.

  The river traders, like the Brouwer Company, used to keep flocks of them to pull their ships up the river. Some boats still went up and down the rivers, and some traders still kept small teams of sea cows to pull the vessels, but the large companies had gone, and most of their animals had been set free.

  The Brouwer Company, owned by Mistress Johanna’s father, had a shed and sea cow barn at the end of the wharf. In the company’s heyday, their two riverboats, the Lady Sara and Lady Davida, were often moored there. The Lady Davida had been sunk during the struggles when the Fire Wizard invaded the city, but the Lady Sara had taken many trips up and down the river even when Johanna was Queen and after her father had sadly passed away. After the Queen’s death, leaving the Brouwer Company without an heir, the ship had lain idle in the harbour for a few months, before being sold to a river trader in Aroden. The barn itself had been abandoned, and this was where Nellie was headed.

  Most of this part of the wharf was now in disrepair, with the warehouses alongside falling to pieces. Repeated fires either from magic or accidentally lit by sailors had not helped matters.

  Something moved in the corner of her eye, but when
she turned her head she saw nothing.

  By the Triune, who was spying on her? The quay behind her lay deserted. The quayside was too high for most of the river ships.

  Across the harbour lay the beautiful river ship of the Guentherite order. The curtains of the cabin windows were closed and the sea cow harness neatly stowed on the deck.

  She remembered that somewhere along this part of the wharf, she and Mistress Johanna had fished Prince Roald out of the water after the palace had burnt. At that time, Mistress Johanna’s father had still occupied the warehouse, and Nellie, Mistress Johanna, Mistress Johanna’s mad friend, and the Prince had sailed upriver to find help. They had needed to go quite a distance before they found anyone alive, and it had been a desperate time.

  The memories chilled her. And she couldn’t shake the feeling that someone was watching her.

  When she went into the main door of the old Brouwer Company sea cow barn, she could see out the roof in a few places where the roof tiles had been blown off. Light streamed through these holes into the dusty space.

  A workbench along the wall would once have held tools but, over the years, various people had removed those and presumably sold them. The leather straps for the team harnesses still hung on hooks above the bench, all covered in a thick layer of dust.

  The wooden harness itself had only partially survived people scavenging for firewood. Only the rear beam—the heaviest of all—was still intact. She mentally looped the leather straps through the eyelets and could almost feel the weight of the thing when lowering it into the water.

  Looking after the sea cows had been one of the things she learned when travelling upriver with Mistress Johanna on that frightening flight from Saardam.

  The basin in the middle of the barn was still the home of a couple of sea cows. The creatures stuck out their heads when she walked along the edge. Maybe they hoped she would toss some cabbage leaves into the water. They would stick their broad, bristly snouts above the surface, and would slurp and slobber while they ate.

  But Nellie hadn’t come here to reminisce. There was work to be done.