Dragonspeaker Chronicles Box Set

by Patty Jansen

  This blissful state of silence would not last forever. Soon she would start making demands.

  Once they came to the village where Nellie’s family lived, how would those villagers react to having this noble foreign woman imposed on them?

  No, Nellie was not looking forward to that at all.

  “What about our monk?” Henrik asked.

  Nellie shuddered. She could still feel the thud of the broom in her hands hit the poor man’s head, and could see him crumpling on the deck. By the Triune, she’d hit a monk. “He’s been quiet too.”

  “Has Gisele seen him yet?”

  “Briefly. I don’t think they knew each other well.”

  The discovery that one of the monks who had served in the palace was female and not even a monk had shaken him. Henrik worked for the guards, and the guards were supposed to have picked up things like this.

  Nellie suspected that in the next couple of days, Henrik’s belief in the infallibility of the guards would be badly shaken. Another thing she was not looking forward to.

  “That girl disturbs me,” Henrik said. “It seems like she is propelled by magic. I don’t know that she ever sleeps.”

  Gisele had admitted to Nellie that she had some sort of affinity with magic, although Nellie didn’t quite understand what she had meant by being an anti-magician. The amount of knowledge about magic that was routinely ignored in Saardam disturbed her. It was why they were in a bad situation like this.

  It was why no one had realised that Shepherd Wilfridus was a powerful magician.

  It was why the royal family had been killed.

  She said, “Gisele is not a bad person.”

  “Maybe not, but very strange one.”

  Someone else had come on deck. Or maybe the small figure with a blanket around him, seated on the roof of the main cabin, had been there all the time. He sat with his legs drawn up to his chest, huddled in the blanket, as he quietly observed the passing riverbank.

  Prince Bruno looked very much like a child.

  “He doesn’t look like much,” Henrik said, seeing Nellie look at the boy. “I thought he was fourteen.”

  “He is fourteen. I’m not sure where he has spent most of his life. It could be that he has been malnourished in that prison all the time. He might never even have seen any of this.” She waved her hand at the scenery.

  “True. Poor boy.”

  Nellie climbed off the cabin, leaving Henrik to his guard duty, and went onto the roof of the main cabin.

  Prince Bruno turned his head when he noticed her. His eyes were dark and hollow, his face pale. His chin sported a bruise.

  Nellie said to him, “You should be down on the deck, resting.”

  He said nothing, so she sat down next to him. She put her hand on his shoulder, but he didn’t react to her touch at all, so she let it slide off. It was as if he had forgotten the times he’d sat on her lap while she’d read him stories.

  After a short silence, he asked, “Where is Saarland?”

  That was a strange question.

  “This is Saarland.” She waved her hand at the river and the riverbank and the trees and a few cows that were grazing peacefully.

  “Is it very big?”

  “No. Saarland is a small country, but it is quite important. We have an important port city.”

  And there she stopped, because these questions were strange, indeed. Why did it matter how big Saarland was?

  In the previous few days, Prince Bruno had not spoken more than a few words. Admittedly, there had not been the time to sit down and talk.

  She continued, “What have you been told? That it’s a very big country?”

  “Important,” he said, as if fixating on that word. His face took on a solemn expression as he said that. It was a strange situation.

  Nellie hugged herself. It was cold up here and now the breeze was coming up. The topic of the conversation was unsettling, too.

  “So where are the people?” he asked.

  “Most of the people live in Saardam,” Nellie said.

  “But what about the farms with rich houses and many crops and animals?”

  “There are farms behind these levies.” Although she wouldn’t call them rich.

  She had no idea where he was going with this discussion.

  He squinted at the riverbanks, but in this part of the river they were high enough that you couldn’t see over them even from the top deck of the riverboat.

  Inside the cabin underneath them, people were talking—mostly children, but a woman replied. It sounded like Agatha, who would be responsible for making breakfast.

  Nellie had better go down to check. “Why don’t you come down to get some breakfast?” she asked Bruno. The galley was well stocked, and they had plenty of grain for making porridge.

  Prince Bruno gave her a blank look.

  “Are you hungry?”

  That seemed to do the trick, because he rose. Nellie hadn’t seen the dragon box underneath his blanket, but he picked it up and carried it with him.

  He slid off the sloping roof and went in the direction of the cabin door.

  Nellie was left by herself, feeling a distinct chill inside. Whatever she had hoped this young boy might do, she wasn’t sure if any of it would come to fruition. His ordeal might have been too damaging and left him too strange to behave normally. Too strange to resurrect the royal family. Too strange to sit on the throne.

  And that brought with it a set of disturbing memories.

  Henrik’s arrow had gone straight into the Regent’s heart, and the man was surely dead. She hated to think the chaos it would have brought to the city. Who was going to take over from the Regent?

  Nellie found Gisele and young Koby at the stern of the boat. They looked like they were having a great time, talking and laughing. They both turned around when Nellie came.

  “Oh, good morning,” Gisele said.

  Koby smiled. “Look, Nellie, she is teaching me how to look after the sea cows.”

  Indeed, Gisele had been drawing a figure on the captain’s note slate which showed the beams, how the beams were attached, and where to put the cows, including notes about dominant animals and where to put them, and males and females.

  “Do you have any experience with this?” Nellie asked her.

  “I did all of this work when I worked as ship’s boy.” There was no limit to the experiences of this strange woman.

  And Nellie wasn’t sure whether she could entirely be trusted. “Have you seen anything unusual so far?”

  “It’s been as quiet as death,” Gisele said.

  Nellie was sure she intended the ominous tone to the statement. Gisele was not afraid and didn’t speak of death and misfortune in hushed tones.

  “We might need to rest the cows for a while,” Nellie said. “The current is strong, and they will be tired.”

  “If we can find a safe spot to anchor. Most of the jetties are flooded, and if I’d seen a place to rest, I would have stopped.”

  Yes, Gisele must be tired, having sat here through the night.

  Nellie said, “I’ll have a quick breakfast and then I’ll come up to relieve you.”

  She went down from the roof through the side door of the galley.

  Inside it was hot and steamy, and Agatha stood over a big pan on the stove.

  “Good morning Agatha,” Nellie said.

  Agatha turned around and gave her a scowl.

  Nellie shrank back. “Whatever is the matter?”

  “That woman thinks she knows everything. Whenever we get where we’re going, I want you to put her as far away from me as possible.”

  “Which woman?”

  “The pampered noble witch.”

  “Madame Sabine?”

  “I would drop the Madame. This woman behaves like a fishwife. She has no manners whatsoever. We rescued her—she can’t boss us around.”

  “What did she say to you?”

  “She’s telling me how to cook, how to make a fire,
how much porridge to put in, as if she knows all this stuff.”

  Nellie went into the main cabin, where many people had now woken up. Most of them had their clothes back, even though some of the children complained that the clothes were cold and damp.

  This sure was a ragtag band of strange people thrown together.

  Nellie spotted Madame Sabine seated on a bench with poor Wim, the palace taster, and another woman they had rescued last night whose name Nellie didn’t know. Madame Sabine wore a man’s shirt and trousers that they’d found in one of the sleeping cabins and was talking animatedly, spreading her hands as she did so.

  In the noise of the cabin, Nellie couldn’t hear what she was saying, except that she didn’t look angry. Wim and the woman ate with vacant expressions, and Madame Sabine just talked. There was no evidence of a disagreement but, clearly, Agatha expected Nellie to do something. Ask what the disagreement with Agatha was about, perhaps?

  Inside the door was a little cupboard from which Anneke and a couple of the other children were taking bowls and spoons for dinner. They stacked them in a basket and went into the galley.

  Nellie helped carry steaming bowls of porridge into the cabin. She made sure Bruno got a good portion. He sat on the bench in the very corner of the cabin with the dragon box on his lap.

  Little Bas sat next to him.

  “Why are you keeping Boots in that box?” he asked.

  “He is tired. He needs to sleep.”

  “Are you really a prince?”

  Nellie couldn’t hear Bruno’s reply. She had arrived at Madame Sabine’s table.

  She put the bowl of porridge down, and expected some sort of protest about I’m not going to eat that, but none came.

  Madame Sabine grabbed the bowl and spoon and started shovelling the porridge into her mouth. She still had her hair tied up behind her back and reminded Nellie of the hungry groundsmen who sometimes came into the palace kitchens.

  This was sure a strange woman.

  So Nellie sat down at the same table, and started eating her porridge.

  Madame Sabine glanced sideways across the room at Bruno a few times. After a silence, she said, “Does he have to carry that box with him everywhere he goes?”

  “He’s afraid that people will steal it.”

  Madame Sabine met her eyes in a sharp look. “I didn’t steal it. The church did.”

  “The church paid for it. My father even disagreed with it.”

  “Your father was an old-fashioned fool. He had all the knowledge and was too afraid to do anything with it.”

  “He might have had good reason.”

  “Reason or not, the church had no right to have the box.”

  Nellie raised her eyebrows. “So, were you going to give it back to the young prince, then?”

  “That creature is too evil for a boy of his age to handle.”

  “Yes. Adult thieves clearly do much better.”

  Touché. Madame Sabine gave her an icy look.

  Nellie returned an equally icy stare. A fog had lifted off Nellie’s mind. All the time in the palace, they had been eating food laced with magic, and it was not until Nellie left the palace that she realised the palace banquets made people happy. All the silly things the guests did or said never mattered because everyone was numb with magic and nobody cared.

  For a while, they ate in an uneasy silence.

  Then Madame Sabine continued as if Nellie had said nothing, “I was just saying to Wim we should be having a rest. There is likely to be trouble further up the river, and we want the team of cows to be fresh and well fed.”

  What did she know about sea cows? “I have just spoken to the people upstairs, and they agree except there is no safe anchorage, and we don’t want to get bogged in any of the banks. The river is high, and most of the jetties are flooded.”

  “Then we must go into one of the smaller side creeks.”

  Nellie lifted her chin. “I’ll let the captain know.”

  Madame Sabine gave her a sarcastic look. “You’re playing with me. We don’t have a captain. The captain of the ship got left in the city. I know, because I saw his face as we were taking off with his ship.”

  Nellie picked up her empty bowl. “One ship, many captains. I’m going to give Gisele a break.”

  But as she crossed the crowded cabin, it occurred to Nellie that they needed someone with a strong hand to lead them, or there would be many disagreements.

  And that person should not be Madame Sabine.

  Chapter 2

  AFTER SHE FINISHED her porridge, Nellie left the cabin and went back into the cold air outside. She walked along the side of the ship to the stern where Gisele and Koby were still talking. They turned around as Nellie joined them.

  “Your turn for breakfast,” Nellie said.

  Gisele took the opportunity gladly, but before Nellie sat at the bench behind the beam where the reins were tied, Koby insisted on explaining everything about the cows and what they had done since the break of daylight.

  Nellie knew most of these things, but she let Koby talk. Looking after the cows and being given a responsibility had brought out the life in Koby. For the first time since meeting her, Nellie noticed a spark in her eyes.

  “Have breakfast,” Nellie reminded her.

  “Oh, but I like it here,” she said. “Someone needs to look after the animals.”

  “I can look after them. You can come back, but first I want you to have breakfast. I have no idea what else will happen today, and I want you to be well fed.”

  Koby left, and Nellie busied herself for a while studying how the harness was tied up and how the cows were doing.

  They had slowed down and were going at a steady pace upriver, sticking to the sides where the current was not as strong.

  The poor things must be tired.

  She let her eyes roam over the water, looking for a place to rest for a while. The mist hung close to the tops of the riverbanks, shrouding trees in a foggy blanket, although bits of blue sky peeped through here and there.

  She knew there were no houses along the river because of the regular spring floods, but still it was disturbing not to see anyone. It was as if the world had been abandoned. She thought of the first time she had fled like this, with Mistress Johanna and Prince Roald, and how, when they had walked up the riverbank, they had found burned out farmhouses where all the people had been killed.

  The memories gave her the shivers.

  “Back again?” a male voice said.

  Nellie turned around.

  Henrik came walking past the side and sat next to her on the bench.

  “Aren’t you cold?” she asked.

  “It’s better now than it was earlier this morning,” he said.

  Which didn’t answer her question. “There is breakfast if you want.”

  “Maybe later.”

  Whatever he was waiting for, he didn’t say. His eyes studied both sides of the river, constantly checking and being vigilant.

  “Have you seen anything?” she asked. He unsettled her a bit because it looked as if he expected some evil to spring out from behind a willow tree at any moment.

  “No, and that disturbs me.”

  “Why?”

  “Because a few times during the night, and again just now, I’ve heard the horse’s hooves, so I know that someone is following us, but I can’t see them.”

  “One horse, or many horses?”

  “It seems only one. At first I thought I was dreaming, or hearing sounds that I’m unfamiliar with. But there is definitely a horse somewhere on that side.”

  He gestured to the right, which was the side of the bank Saardam was on.

  Nellie peered at the riverbank, but couldn’t see anything either.

  Yet it was only to be expected that someone would keep checking them out. The boat was going at a speed slow enough for a horse to keep up. The vessel was big and heavy, made of solid wood, and with more people on board than it was designed to comfortably carry.


  “What do you want to do about this follower?”

  “I’d shoot him if he came close enough.”

  Nellie remembered how he had shot the Regent and tried to shoot the Shepherd at the same time. This was a dangerous man.

  “And will he come close enough?”

  “If he is smart, no. I expect him to be smart. He hasn’t shown his face all night.”

  Now Nellie understood why he didn’t want to go inside. He was the only person on board the ship who had any skill with weapons.

  “Do you want me to get breakfast for you?”

  “That would be nice.”

  So Nellie made her way back to the cabin, because the sea cows looked like they were behaving themselves.

  Inside the galley, Agatha was still stirring the pan.

  “Have you had any breakfast?” Nellie asked her.

  “Not yet, but when this is done, I’ll leave the cleaning up to the kids, and I’ll have a good bowl.”

  Agatha knew how to look after herself.

  “I’d like a bowl for Henrik.”

  “Of course. I expected him to come in. What is he doing out there?”

  “He says someone is following us, and he’s waiting for them to show themselves.”

  “Following us?”

  “On the riverbank. On a horse.”

  Agatha looked worried, but she took a bowl and filled it to the brim with thick steaming porridge. She gave it to Nellie. “Tell him we’re working on the sugar.”

  Nellie carried the bowl outside where it steamed even more. “Here you are, eat it up quickly before it gets cold.”

  Henrik took the bowl and spoon from her with a grateful expression on his face. He sat down on the bench to eat.

  For a while, Nellie watched him, and then she watched the sea cows which were still slowly swimming up the river.

  “How familiar are you with this section of the river?” she asked.

  He couldn’t answer because his mouth was full.

  She continued, “We need to rest the cows somewhere. They need to graze.”

  He nodded, swallowed and said, “Hopefully we’ll find a safe spot around the Bend.”