by Pierre Pevel
Each louve associated her soul with that of a protective dragon, thanks to a ritual taught to the Chatelaines by the Guardians in the distant past. This ritual was dangerous and Agnès knew the risks she was taking when she let the heavy doors of the Hall of the Ordeal close behind her. Dressed only in a white vestment, her hair cut very short since she had pronounced her vows, she kneeled in prayer on the bare flagstones. Candles were burning in the darkness. The silence was deep, and suitable for spiritual communion. Before her, on a small wooden stand, Agnès saw a globe that seemed to be filled with a black, shifting ink whose slow swirls drew in the eye like an abyss.
A Sphère d’me.
A strange irony. The last time she had seen a Sphère d’me, Agnès had destroyed it to disrupt a Black Claw ceremony. She’d witnessed the extraordinary power contained within. A power which she would now have to confront on her own before she could be accepted by it, because it was as much a matter of dominating this spectral dragon as of winning its respect. The Ordeal richly deserved its name. It had cost some candidates their lives. Others emerged with their spirit numbed and broken. Those who passed the test successfully did not speak of it, or only to other louves, who alone could understand.
Focused on her task, determined, Agnès plunged mentally into the tormented shadows of the Sphère d’me …
… and felt an immense presence invade the hall.
It was as if she could feel the shadows vibrating all the way down to the bowels of the earth.
The Ordeal had begun.
Night had fallen.
At the Hôtel des Ambassadeurs, La Fargue gazed out from the torchlit terrace at the dark flowerbeds and straight paths of the great garden, where patrols paced up and down with a steady step. Alone and unable to concentrate his thoughts on any single subject, he thought about the Arcana and their Grand Design, about Laincourt who seemed to have gone missing, about the secrets of the Guards, and about the strange manoeuvres of the Black Claw and the comte de Pontevedra.
Pontevedra …
He had borne the name Louveciennes, and he had been La Fargue’s best friend. At the time he had been a gentleman of honour and of duty. Together they had performed many brave services for the French Crown, on the fields of battle and behind the scenes of great historical events. Together they had founded the Blades at Cardinal Richelieu’s request. They had carefully recruited Almades, then Leprat and Bretteville, and Marciac almost immediately after. Very quickly, the Blades had registered their first successes and gained in boldness. Then Agnès and Ballardieu had joined their ranks.
Leaning on the terrace balustrade, La Fargue heard someone approaching behind him. He glanced over his shoulder and recognised the tall and elegant silhouette of the man now known as the comte de Pontevedra. He gave no reaction, and turned his eyes back to the garden. The other joined him without saying a word and set down two glasses and the bottle of wine which he had brought out with him. He filled the glasses and pushed one in front of the captain.
The old gentleman looked at it briefly and then away.
‘Surely you jest,’ he said coldly. ‘I would kill you if I could.’
‘Yes, but you cannot …’
Louveciennes’ betrayal had been brutal and unexpected. It had occurred during the siege of La Rochelle, in the course of a mission that subsequently ended in an appalling fiasco and the death of Bretteville. It had been a terrible blow for La Fargue: after betraying the Blades, his friend, his brother-in-arms, had fled to Spain, where he had enjoyed a dazzling ascent in his fortunes, becoming the comte de Pontevedra.
‘You must return to your chambers, monsieur l’ambassadeur,’ said La Fargue. ‘You will be much safer than you are out here.’
‘It’s stifling upstairs! And Savelda is here to watch my back.’
The one-eyed agent of the Black Claw was indeed standing nearby.
‘As you will. You know I would be the last person to mourn if a pistol ball fired from a nearby roof were to pass through your throat.’
With these words, La Fargue turned round and took a few steps towards the mansion, but Pontevedra called out:
‘How is Ana-Lucia?’
‘My daughter is called Anne. And she is well.’
‘Indeed? Are you quite certain of that?’
The Blades’ captain scowled.
‘What are you trying to say?’
The comte de Pontevedra approached him.
‘Do you know what I’m doing here?’
‘You are representing the Black Claw,’ said La Fargue, displaying an expression of profound contempt. ‘It’s not enough that you betrayed your king. You also had to betray your race.’
‘Really? Am I the only one here to serve dragons?’ asked Pontevedra with cutting irony. When La Fargue made no reply, he added: ‘And if we’re giving out lessons on morality, let’s not forget which one of us seduced the other’s wife, shall we?’
They had loved the same woman, although La Fargue had resisted acting on his feelings with all his might, out of loyalty to his friend.
‘We loved one another, but there was only that one night,’ he replied. ‘One night, which Oriane and I never forgave ourselves for. Besides, you were the one she joined in Spain. With Anne.’
The two men remained silent for a moment, both prisoners of painful shared memories. Then Pontevedra spoke to Savelda:
‘Leave us.’
The order took the Spanish henchman by surprise:
‘My lord, I—’
‘Leave us!’
Savelda hesitated again, then bowed and retired.
Pontevedra took La Fargue by the elbow and led him a few steps away. Intrigued, the captain did not resist.
‘Here,’ said Pontevedra, removing a leather wallet from his silver-embroidered doublet. ‘I wanted to give this to you, hand-to-hand.’
La Fargue took the wallet.
‘What is it?’ he asked warily.
‘I have resources at my disposal you cannot imagine. I know that you entrusted your daughter to the Guardians to keep her away from the Black Claw and from Richelieu’s curiosity. I also know the Guardians assure you that she is safe. That’s not true, and this is proof … You see, I don’t ask you to take my word on it.’
‘You do well not to.’
The captain of the Blades slipped the wallet beneath his shirt, against his skin.
Shortly after, upon returning inside, La Fargue pondered matters as he watched the comte de Pontevedra climbing the main stairs towards his quarters. Then he joined Alessandra and Leprat on the steps leading to the front courtyard. Looking worried, La Donna was clutching a note a messenger had just delivered from the Palais-Cardinal.
‘Well?’ asked the old captain.
‘No news,’ said Alessandra. ‘I want to believe, but I’m beginning to think that he will not come …’
The person they were still waiting for, the person that Pontevedra had come to meet in secret, was none other than Valombre. The Black Claw had asked to enter into contact with the Guardians under the aegis of Cardinal Richelieu. They had insisted on the urgency of this unprecedented meeting. But Pontevedra had not deigned to explain the reason for requesting it, which had in turn complicated matters for La Donna. The Guardians were exceedingly cautious. They did not like to proceed without knowing why.
‘Valombre will come if the Seven permit him to,’ said La Fargue.
A rider then came into the courtyard. It was Marciac, returning from the Hôtel de l’Épervier.
‘Laincourt still hasn’t turned up,’ he said after jumping down from the saddle. ‘And it’s been a few hours since he left with his bookseller friend.’
‘Bertaud,’ Leprat reminded them.
‘Yes, Bertaud. According to Guibot, the man was frantic with worry.’
‘Laincourt has no doubt gone to assist him,’ La Fargue reckoned. ‘But didn’t he tell anyone where he was going or what he was intending to do?’
‘No.’
�
�That’s not like him,’ said Alessandra gravely.
She had met Laincourt in Madrid, when he had been spying on behalf of the cardinal. She knew his qualities and held him in high esteem.
‘Perhaps the bookseller is at home,’ said Marciac. ‘He has a shop near Place Maubert, I believe. I could pay him a visit …’
La Fargue cursed.
One of his men was missing and he could do nothing about it, being retained here by a secret meeting which, it seemed, might not even take place! And to crown it all, one of the participants was an individual he hated, yet was duty-bound to protect!
The captain of the Blades forced himself to recover his calm. Fists on his hips, he took a deep breath and arched his back, his face lifting to see an enormous full moon in a deep blue sky.
A window shattered just above him, showering him with sparkling debris as Savelda’s broken-limbed corpse crashed to the ground at the bottom of the steps.
After a brief instant of stupor, La Fargue, Leprat, and Marciac rushed inside the building. They unsheathed their rapiers and seized their pistols as they dashed up the main stairs. Broke down the door to Pontevedra’s chambers. Crossed the antechamber in a bound. Burst into the adjoining room.
Seriously wounded, Pontevedra had dragged himself over to the bed leaving a wide trail of blood in his wake. A drac was bent over him, preparing to finish him off with a sword thrust to the chest. A second one stood near the window by which they had entered and which Pontevedra had no doubt opened to take in the fresh night air. They were armed and dressed like mercenary swordsmen, but these were no ordinary dracs: they had leathery wings, ample and powerful enough to permit them to fly.
Surprised, the first drac leaped through the window and escaped. But the Blades did not allow the second any time to react. La Fargue opened fire, then Marciac and Leprat. One pistol ball hit the winged drac in the middle of the chest. The second pierced him in the neck, and the third put out an eye and tore away the back of his skull.
La Donna arrived, but was jostled aside by the sentries who had been guarding the doors and windows on the ground floor. The room rapidly filled with agitated people. The winged drac inside was already dead. A few musket shots fired from the window failed to hit his fleeing companion, now flying off into the distance. La Fargue raised his voice to restore order while the dying Pontevedra was laid out on his bed. The captain sent the sentries back to their posts, except for two who remained at the door. Leprat helped Marciac examine the wounds of the man who – in a former life – had been one of their own. Meanwhile, Alessandra studied the winged drac. Intrigued, she picked up his rapier, looked closely at it, turned suddenly pale and dropped the weapon.
‘My God!’
She ran from the room.
Marciac had just stepped back from the bed and was wiping his hands with a cloth. There was nothing he could do to save Pontevedra, as the other two already understood. Surprised by the behaviour of La Donna, he hesitated as to whether he should go after her, and gave his captain a questioning look.
‘Find her!’ ordered La Fargue, just before the dying man gripped him by the collar with a blood-slicked hand.
The Gascon went.
In the front courtyard of the Hôtel des Ambassadeurs, there were horses waiting. Alessandra had already mounted one of them side-saddle when Marciac joined her.
‘Where are you going?’ he asked, seizing the animal by the bit.
‘The rapier. It was made of draconite.’
Draconite was an alchemical stone dreaded by the dragons. It allowed in particular the fabrication of a steel that inflicted terrible wounds on them, but gave humans no more cause for fear than the ordinary variety.
‘Don’t you think it strange those dracs had draconite weapons?’ continued La Donna. ‘Why go to all that trouble, just to kill Pontevedra?’
At that point, realisation dawned on Marciac.
Although the Black Claw’s envoy was not a dragon, Valombre was. Alessandra feared that the winged dracs had been sent to assassinate him, too. Perhaps they had already struck the Guardians’ representative, which would explain his alarming lateness for the meeting.
La Donna forced Marciac to release her mount and left through the carriage gate at a fast trot.
‘Wait!’ yelled the Gascon, climbing onto a horse.
He took off in pursuit of her.
Coughing up blood, eyes already growing glassy, Pontevedra had seized La Fargue by the collar. His fist was firm but his arm was trembling when, stammering, he tried to draw the Blades’ captain towards him. The old gentleman bent down, bringing his face close to that of his former friend.
‘If you’re hoping for a pardon …’ he started.
‘Not … Not a … pardon,’ murmured the dying man in a barely audible voice. Without releasing La Fargue, he swallowed painfully and gathered his last remaining strength. ‘The … queen … The queen … in … danger … The qu—’
He died with the words trapped in his throat.
La Fargue had to tug on his wrist to free himself from the dead man’s grasp. He stood up and turned to Leprat with a worried expression.
‘What did he say?’ asked the musketeer.
‘He … He said that the queen was in danger.’
‘What? In danger now?’
‘I believe so, yes. But I don’t know anything about it.’
‘The queen is in Saint-Germain with the king and I don’t—’ Leprat corrected himself: ‘No, I’m wrong. The queen is not in Saint-Germain. It’s Friday.’
‘So where is she?’
‘She’s here. In Paris.’
It was a black, massive creature, which advanced across the night sky with great, steady beats of its wings.
The Primordial was flying towards Paris, and it could see the first lights of the city in the distance before it, as well as the luminous blazes of the three powerful solaires. One – white – was at the top of Tour du Temple, in the Chatelaines’ Enclos. Another – red – indicated the Palais-Cardinal. A third – blue – shone above the Louvre.
The dragon with the jewelled brow felt a strange emotion pervade it: in the Arcana’s magic study, the Heresiarch had just smiled.
Laincourt emerged from unconciousness and grimaced in pain.
In the dim light, Clotilde was gently dabbing his battered face with a piece of cloth torn from her dress and dampened with a little stagnant water. She looked down at him with a smiling but exhausted face, her eyes reddened and her cheeks smeared with dirt. Long locks of hair had escaped her unravelling chignon.
Laincourt slowly returned to full awareness.
And remembered.
Contrary to appearances, the house on rue des Bernardins had not been empty. Not only had the Demoiselle been waiting for him while holding Clotilde prisoner, but there were numerous drac and human mercenaries hiding in the upper storeys.
Laincourt had been disarmed.
Then, at the Demoiselle’s order and before Clotilde’s eyes, he had been beaten. With fists at first. Then with boots, when he had fallen and curled into a ball on the floor. And the blows had continued thereafter, methodically administered with a cold cruelty, devoid of passion or fury, while Clotilde, in tears, had begged the dracs to stop and implored the Demoiselle, who alone had the power, to put an end to the torture.
Laincourt had finally fainted.
‘Where are we?’ he asked, in a thick voice.
Squinting, he sat up and discovered an empty cubby-hole, damp and dusty, faintly lit by the rays of a lantern coming through a gap beneath the door.
‘I don’t know,’ replied Clotilde. ‘When you lost consciousness, they locked you up inside a chest and then put me in another. I don’t know where they took us, but I think we are still in Paris. It could be … It could be a cellar, don’t you think?’
He nodded and then rose to his feet, unable to contain a moan of pain as he did.
‘Monsieur Laincourt! You shouldn’t get up! You—’
‘It’s all right, Clotilde. Those dracs knew what they were doing. They only wanted to make me suffer and to torment you, not to do any serious damage.’
‘But why?’
‘Out of cruelty. And I think you can call me Arnaud, Clotilde.’
But the explanation put forward by Laincourt left the girl mute with disbelief. He availed himself of her silence to examine the door: it was solid and double-locked. There was no other exit.
‘Who are these people?’ Clotilde finally asked. ‘Why did they hurt you? What do they want from us, exactly? And why do they …? That woman. She … She said that you were old friends …’
Laincourt suddenly became aware of the full degree of young Clotilde’s distress. He came back to sit down next to her, took her hands, and said:
‘Everything that has happened to you is my fault, Clotilde. I am sorry for that.’
Then, because she was looking at him in utter incomprehension, he decided that she deserved to know. He told her that he was an agent of Cardinal Richelieu. He told her about the vicomtesse de Malicorne, what she had tried to do, and how he had foiled her plans. Lastly, he explained she was now called the ‘Demoiselle’, but was still seeking vengeance.
‘And she abducted you to get to me, Clotilde,’ he confessed.
But he lacked the courage to admit that he didn’t know why she was still alive. The bait was of no interest once the prey had fallen into the trap. Clotilde no longer served any purpose …
… unless the Demoiselle was reserving some refined piece of cruelty for him.
The door suddenly opened. A drac and two men burst into the room. The first struck Laincourt in the face before he had time to react. The others seized Clotilde despite her screams of terror. Laincourt tried to defend her, but a kick from a boot to his belly cut off his breath. The men dragged the girl out by force and the drac slammed the door shut behind them. He locked it with a key as Laincourt got up, staggered over, and threw himself against it in vain. His brow pressed against the wood, he hammered on the solid panel with both fists, but could only hear Clotilde crying and calling out to him for help.
