Dragon Arcana

by Pierre Pevel

  ‘You’re not in any danger here,’ he said. ‘I’m not your enemy.’

  ‘Then why did you attack me last night?’

  ‘I did not know who you were. And after I found that out, I needed to seek advice.’

  ‘Seek advice from whom?’

  The man smiled.

  ‘Very well,’ allowed Saint-Lucq. ‘Then: seek advice on what subject?’

  ‘What should be done about you. And also, what I could reveal to you.’

  Sitting up in the bed, the half-blood turned towards his host and leaned back against the wall.

  ‘Who are you?’ he asked.

  ‘My name is Valombre.’

  ‘That’s only a name.’

  ‘And I am a dragon.’

  ‘That I can well believe. What do you have to do with Captain La Fargue?’

  ‘He and I serve the same masters.’

  ‘Explain that to me.’

  ‘I can do that. But wouldn’t you prefer to hear the truth from your captain?’

  Saint-Lucq thought about it, probing the grey, tranquil eyes of the other man, and then said:

  ‘Let’s start with you.’

  Marciac did everything he could to keep Ballardieu alive. Then the Blades transported the old soldier to Paris in the cart that had been so generously offered to them. Their patient was laid out on two superimposed mattresses, to protect him from jolts during the journey. Agnès sat nearby to comfort him, to reassure him that he would recover and that all would be well. La Fargue took the reins and the Gascon followed them on horseback. They had to halt twice on the road to tighten the tourniquets.

  Upon their arrival at the Hôtel de l’Épervier, Leprat was waiting for them. He had gone ahead at a full gallop, and had found a surgeon whose services were often used by the King’s Musketeers, the same doctor who had tended him when Gagnière had left him for dead in rue Saint-Denis. Ballardieu was carried into the kitchen, where he was laid out on the large oak table. Then the surgeon asked that they leave him with his patient so that he might examine him without disturbance. He had come with an assistant and had no need of anyone else. He would call if there was something they could do.

  The others waited in the courtyard with Guibot, André, and sweet Naïs who was clutching her apron and flinching at the slightest sound, the smallest movement.

  Finally, the surgeon came out, wiping his hands on an old rag.

  ‘This man has already received care,’ he said. ‘Who ministered to him?’

  ‘I did,’ replied Marciac.

  ‘Are you a doctor, monsieur?’

  ‘No, but I came close to becoming one.’

  ‘Be that as it may, if not for you, your friend would not be alive … Nevertheless, he is not yet out of danger. Far from it.’

  ‘Can his leg be saved?’ La Fargue asked.

  ‘I fear not,’ answered the surgeon.

  At those words, Agnès turned away, seeming both upset and furious. Leprat put an arm around her and drew her a few steps apart from the others.

  ‘The leg is too badly damaged,’ the surgeon continued with a grave face. ‘It must be taken off. However … However, I fear your friend will not survive an amputation. He has already lost a considerable amount of blood. He is very weak. And no longer young.’

  ‘I do not understand, monsieur,’ said La Fargue. ‘What do you advise?’

  ‘The leg is lost. It must be cut off, but perhaps we might risk waiting for the patient to regain some strength before inflicting this ordeal upon him. But I stress the word “risk”. For if we wait and the terrible wounds to his leg begin to spoil, your friend will certainly perish as a result.’

  ‘So you are asking us to make a wager.’

  ‘I am asking you to make a choice, for a friend who no longer has all his reason …’

  Still and pale, Agnès saw the Blades’ captain turn toward her.

  ‘This decision belongs to you, Agnès,’ said La Fargue. ‘But if you do not want to make it, I will.’

  The Gentleman dismounted in the ruins of Bois-Noir and held his horse by the bit. Without saying a word, he contemplated the smoking rubble, then the corpses that the survivors had aligned in front of a wall. There were no more than a handful of drac mercenaries still alive, and most of them were wounded. La Donna had escaped. And the Illuminator had vanished.

  It was a disaster.

  The Gentleman lifted his eyes towards the Enchantress who had remained in her saddle. They exchanged a long, serious, worried look, which was interrupted by the arrival of three riders.

  It was Keress Karn and two of his soldiers. Filthy with dust and sweat, the red drac wore a bloody bandage on his right arm, just above the elbow.

  ‘We found him,’ the drac leader announced as he leapt down from his horse.

  ‘Dead?’ asked the Gentleman.

  ‘Yes. In a dry riverbed, about half a league from here. We followed his tracks there.’

  ‘Dead?’ exclaimed the Enchantress in disbelief. ‘The Illuminator is dead?’

  Keress Karn deemed it useless to repeat himself. Besides, he considered it beneath him to answer a woman. He only spoke to the Gentleman.

  Overcome by anger, the latter clenched his jaws tightly.

  ‘Who?’ he asked in a rasping voice. ‘Who could have—’

  ‘Their leader is called La Fargue,’ explained the red drac. ‘I recognised him. He was there at Château de Mareuil.’

  ‘I want him to pay,’ ordered the Gentleman. ‘I want him to suffer, and I want him to die.’

  The operation went well, and afterwards Ballardieu was carried up to his chamber. The surgeon said he was satisfied but remained cautious: he would not permit himself much hope unless his patient survived the night. He left some instructions and promised to return the following day. Then he left, taking the severed leg with him, while Naïs scrubbed the kitchen clean. The old soldier finally drifted into a deep sleep and the Blades had nothing to do but wait.

  Because he knew he was of no further use to the patient and hated feeling impotent, Marciac washed, changed his clothes, and, after hastily ridding himself of the garments encrusted with Ballardieu’s blood, left the Hôtel de l’Épervier while trying to persuade himself that he wasn’t running away.

  Besides, didn’t he have other business to settle?

  Exhausted but incapable of resting, he followed rue Sainte-Marguerite which ran some distance, then rue des Boucheries in the same direction, crossed through the old city wall by means of the Saint-Germain gate and ended up in the neighbourhood of rue de la Harpe. On rue Mignon, he found a taproom that was ideally located for his purposes. He stopped there, ordered a glass of eau-de-vie and, leaning on the counter, sipped while he kept watch on the house where Gabrielle told him the party had taken place, during which the young and pretty Manon had disappeared.

  It was a big bourgeois dwelling with a solid-looking gate and a courtyard separating it from the street. Its owner was a rich and powerful man who led a discreet life. He was named Cousty, was a widower and for a long time had been the most feared judge sitting at Le Châtelet. He no longer presided there, but he was still very influential. Rumour had it that he was also mean and greedy. As proof of that, he only retained one old lackey in his service, and he beat him often.

  Having finished his glass, Marciac suffered from a slight dizziness. Another man in his position would have recalled that he had not eaten since the previous day and taken remedy. Another man would have told himself that he needed to sleep and have gone home. But Marciac was Marciac, so he had another eau-de-vie while devising a plan. A voice inside him told him that his plan was most certainly a bad idea, but it was a voice that the Gascon seldom listened to, so that life would continue to offer him surprises. Alcohol, moreover, had a tendency to silence it.

  Marciac drained a third glass and left to carry out a few errands in the neighbourhood.

  Firstly, to find a pair of thick gloves.

  And secondly, to buy some l
amp oil.

  Agnès finally fell asleep at Ballardieu’s bedside.

  When she reopened her eyes and straightened up in her armchair, night was falling, a candle was burning in the chamber, and the old soldier was gazing at her, his head turned to the side on his pillow.

  His face was livid, with drawn features and eyes surrounded by black circles, but he smiled at her tenderly.

  ‘Hello, girl,’ he murmured in a voice still hoarse from his screams when the saw had bitten into the bone. ‘So, we meet again …’

  ‘You … You’re awake? For how long?’

  ‘No, don’t fuss … You were sleeping so soundly I didn’t have the heart to disturb you … And then, everything was … Everything was so peaceful …’

  Agnès stared at him, incredulous, not knowing what to say, her eyes both bright with joy and drowning in tears. Ballardieu was talking to her. Ballardieu wasn’t dead. Ballardieu was there and always would be, exactly as he used to tell her when she was a small child, to reassure her.

  ‘How is it,’ he asked, ‘that I’m feeling no pain?’

  ‘You’re full of golden henbane liqueur.’

  ‘Henbane, hmm? … My word, it … it works wonders.’

  ‘Leprat brought it. No doubt he takes it himself to soothe the pain of his ranse …’

  ‘I’ll need to … thank him.’

  ‘I’ll fetch him!’ said the young and fiery baronne, jumping up. ‘And the others! They’re downstairs, waiting for—’

  In her enthusiasm, she was almost at the door when Ballardieu stopped her.

  ‘No, girl … No …’ He raised a hand in her direction, but let it fall back on the sheet limply. ‘Later, perhaps …’

  Agnès understood and, feeling a little embarrassed, returned to his bedside.

  However, instead of sitting in the armchair, she carefully sat on the bed by Ballardieu and took hold of his hand.

  ‘I … I’m sorry,’ she confessed, lowering her eyes.

  ‘About this old leg?’ he retorted, forcing a note of gaiety into his voice. But as Agnès would not smile, he became grave again. ‘I have to believe Providence wanted me to finish my life on one leg rather than two. Of course, this is going to keep me out of some adventures, but that’s not such a bad thing. I’m getting old, after all. Perhaps it’s time I retired …’

  ‘You?’

  ‘Look at me, Agnès. What have I become?’

  ‘An old beast who I love and who is still a long way from making his last trip to the stable …’

  Moved by her words, Ballardieu smiled.

  ‘Listen to me … I was a soldier, a man of the sword in your father’s service. I imagined I would find glory, or perhaps fortune, on the fields of battle. Or perhaps none of that. Perhaps death. But I never imagined a different destiny from that of other warriors and hunters of fortune … And then your father entrusted you to my care. My life changed from the moment I laid eyes on you, but I didn’t understand that to begin with, far from it. I even denied the obvious, when time passed and I became attached to you. And do you know when I finally understood?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You were still very small. Perhaps four or five years old. You … You weren’t even as tall as my sword.’ Ballardieu’s gaze became lost for a moment in the past. ‘To make matters short … one day you disappeared. You simply disappeared … Of course, we searched for you. In the manor, first of all. Then all around, in the domain, and then even farther afield. You were not to be found, no matter how loudly we called. We beat the woodland. We sounded the pond and dragged the riverbed. All in vain. And I thought I was going to die. I stopped eating, and sleeping. And each time someone came by with news, I was torn between the hope that you were safe and the terror that they had discovered your little body lying lifeless somewhere … It was … It was a veritable torture … But I needed that torture to understand … or rather to admit to myself, that I loved you like the flesh of my flesh, and that my destiny was to protect you always.’ Agnès, her eyes brimming with tears, was unable to wrench her gaze away from his. ‘What I’m trying to tell you, girl … What I’m trying to tell you is that, sometimes, it takes us time to recognise the path that has been traced for us, and that only delays the inevitable … We all have a destiny, don’t you see? A destiny that might be very different from the one we believe in or the one we want for ourselves. For some people, that destiny is modest. But for others, like you, it’s … something immense …’

  Now pensive, Agnès nodded slowly but turned her eyes away and did not answer.

  ‘I think … I think I’m going to sleep for a while,’ said the old soldier in a weak voice. ‘You should do the same.’

  The young woman stood up.

  ‘But not in that armchair,’ Ballardieu added. ‘Not here … Go and rest in your bed.’

  ‘The surgeon said we should watch over you.’

  ‘Your chamber isn’t far, Agnès.’

  She hesitated, and then said:

  ‘All right. But—’

  ‘But what?’

  ‘But I’m here, aren’t I? How did your story end?’

  Ballardieu managed a weary smile.

  ‘Oh … you reappeared three days later, as suddenly as you had vanished. Marion found you: you were playing in the garden as if it were the most natural thing in the world. You were wearing the same clothes. You were clean and in good health. You were just a little thirsty, and we never found out—’

  ‘I don’t remember any of that.’

  ‘Of course not. I told you: you were very little. A strange adventure, don’t you think? And yet after that, you’re surprised that I’m afraid to let you out of my sight …’

  ‘Get some rest, you old beast.’

  La Fargue dined alone in the garden.

  Sitting at the table beneath the chestnut tree, he turned his back to the mansion and chewed without tasting his food, his gaze lost in the shadows. He was not hungry, but he knew that an empty sack could not stand upright. The darkness surrounding him was profound, barely relieved by the trembling flicker of the candle placed on the old table, which had attracted the attention of a moth.

  Finally the captain realised he had company. He did not react with alarm and, still looking straight ahead, asked:

  ‘How long have you been here?’

  ‘Not long,’ replied Saint-Lucq.

  La Fargue knew that if he had become aware of the other’s presence, it was because the half-blood wanted him to. Saint-Lucq, in more ways than one, belonged to the night.

  ‘Are you spying on me?’

  ‘I’m observing you. Who are the Guardians, captain?’

  La Fargue became perfectly still, then pushed his plate away.

  ‘I like to see who I’m talking to.’

  ‘Very well.’

  Without a sound, the half-blood dressed in black seemed to appear out of thin air. As was often the case, it was the scarlet disks of his spectacles, reflecting the light, that became visible first.

  Saint-Lucq sat at the table, facing the old gentleman.

  ‘Who are the Guardians, captain?’

  ‘If you’re asking me that question, you already know the answer.’

  ‘I’m doing you a favour, captain.’

  ‘A favour? You?’

  ‘That of giving you a chance to explain yourself.’

  ‘And since when do I answer to you?’

  ‘Since I have served and fought and killed under your orders. Who are the Guardians?’

  ‘They are one of the reasons why the human race has not been decimated, or enslaved, by the dragons. They operate in the shadows … and they watch over us. They are dragons, but they know that their time and that of their race, in this world, is drawing to a close. They believe they have no solution other than to live in accord with humans or hidden amongst them.’

  ‘And you serve them.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Since when?’

  ‘Do you really not know? Val
ombre sent me a message about your meeting. I’ve been waiting for you, Saint-Lucq.’

  ‘Since when?’

  ‘It started five years ago. After La Rochelle.’

  ‘Does the cardinal know?’

  ‘He knows. He’s always known. They often conceal their true intentions, but the Guardians are not the enemies of France. On the contrary, without them, the Chatelaines would not exist. You can’t imagine the services they have rendered us in the past.’

  ‘That doesn’t matter to me. I want to know who I serve. I want to know who I kill for and who I might be killed for.’

  Saint-Lucq stood up and walked away.

  Motionless, La Fargue watched him disappear into the night, and then lowered his eyes to the table and the steel signet ring the half-blood had left there.

  The Gentleman and the Enchantress returned home in the darkest hours of the night.

  Having burned their dead in the ruins of Bois-Noir, they rode back to Paris at a slow walk, almost without speaking, followed by Keress Karn and the few armed dracs who had survived the Blades’ attack. The Hôtel des Arcanes was brightly lit when they arrived. Surprised, they dismounted in the courtyard and exchanged puzzled, worried glances when they heard the sound of laughter coming from the garden.

  They found the Demoiselle and the Heresiarch having supper together by torchlight.

  The judge Cousty woke with a start when a hand gloved in thick leather was clapped over his mouth. Immediately, the man pinning him down poured a liquid on his face. It had an odour he recognised: naphta. He struggled as the lamp oil ran into his eyes and over his temples, drenching his hair and soaking his pillow. He inhaled a little of it, gagged, and almost vomited. But the hand stifling his cries was firm and the man continued to press down with all his weight. Frightened, Cousty thrashed in vain while the naphta continued to run.

  When the goatskin flask was empty, Marciac threw it into a corner of the chamber and waited for the judge to calm down and submit to him. Only then did he relax his hold slightly, in order to signify to his victim that he was making the right decision. Cousty finally became still, with the sheets twisted around his naked legs. He rolled his immense, fearful eyes. His gasping breath lifted his bony chest and made greasy bubbles form at his nostrils. He squinted, trying to make out the Gascon’s face in the light of the sole candle placed on a table beside the bed. He was certain he had extinguished that candle before going to sleep, as he did every night.