The Dragon King

by Patty Jansen

  Adalbert Verdonck didn’t care much about them, although Nellie spotted him going into the shed where Madame Sabine’s balloons were stored. As it turned out, he arranged for all the experiments to be packed up into crates.

  Madame Sabine was not happy about this, and Nellie remembered the threat he had made to burn all her things.

  She also heard that Madame Sabine had an argument with one of Lord Verdonck’s house staff about sending a letter. He would not pay for it, and she had no money. She argued that if he wanted everything out of his shed, he should give her the opportunity to arrange it, to which he said that she could take her horse, since it was roaming around the field stirring up his horses.

  The attempt by Madame Sabine to capture the horse would’ve been amusing if she hadn’t been so angry.

  “I don’t know what’s gotten into that animal,” she said. “It was trained extremely well. Someone has gone and spoiled it.”

  Apparently, this someone was supposed to have been Henrik, because he often went and gave the horse carrots when he and Bruno were training outside.

  Of course, Nellie felt sure it was the magical influence of the dragon. The horse didn’t understand what was going on but, like Mustafa’s animals, it felt the excitement of the presence of the dragon, and no longer wanted to listen to human commands.

  But trying to command the dragon was another thing altogether.

  Increasingly, he wandered freely around the fields. If the women shut the barn door and didn’t want him to come in or go out, he would revert to his ethereal form and slip underneath the door in the form of a cloud of sparks.

  Bruno would sometimes try to make him come and, when he did, he would try to climb on his back, but so far the only person who had ridden the dragon was Nellie, and that had been a total accident.

  Nellie could, however, ask the dragon to come inside at night, and usually he would do so for a short period. In a way, the dragon was like cat. He would come when there was food or he wanted to sit by the fire, but he got bored quickly and asked for the owner to open the door. The dragon didn’t need to do this. He would simply dissolve into sparks. Nellie usually got the dragon to come when the children went to sleep. She suspected that the dragon simply liked sleeping with the children, because the children were innocent, their intentions were clear, and they didn’t try to take advantage of the dragon.

  But every time she called the dragon, Bruno was watching.

  “I want to do that. He is my dragon,” he would say.

  And several times she showed him what she did and told him to hold out his hand and what words to say so that the dragon knew it was bedtime. Which he probably knew anyway.

  Bruno tried a few times, but she didn’t think he was genuine or polite enough. The dragon didn’t like commands, and didn’t like when people shouted at him. He also tended to protect animals more than people.

  The stray horses that had been with Madame Sabine’s horse had all been recaptured by their owners, mostly people who lived on the estate, but a flock of sheep persistently hung around, and no one was clear where they’d come from. When the groundsman tried to chase them out of the vegetable garden, the dragon flew across and chased the man off. Bruno ran after them whistling and yelling at the dragon to kill the man, but Nellie had to explain that this was not something the dragon liked.

  “How can he not like spitting fire? That’s what a dragon does. He’s a dangerous creature.”

  “Yes, but when dangerous creatures are good and just, they only use violence as a threat. They try at all times to use their abilities to terrify people.”

  And it seemed that finally Bruno was starting to understand. He had to be friends with the dragon before the dragon would do what he said. The dragon had to trust him. In the evening, he went into the paddock and called out to the dragon. He scratched the heads and ears of the sheep that always hung around with the dragon. Today, there were two goats as well, and Madame Sabine’s horse was never far.

  He picked up the little kitten that was still following them around and was now a slightly bigger kitten. Only when he had shown his affection to all these animals would the dragon come in and take his position with the children. Bruno told them a story as well, even if he was a little upset that none of the children knew what a pulpit was, and then he was upset that some of them fell asleep.

  That wasn’t really because the story was boring—even if it was—but because the children were tired.

  All the while this was happening, Nellie was looking on, happy that at least something was going right. If they had to wait in this barn until spring came before they could do anything, they might as well use it to be as prepared as possible.

  Chapter 11

  * * *

  IT WAS ONLY JUST LIGHT when Nellie woke to someone touching her shoulder.

  She opened her eyes to see that Henrik had kneeled next to her. He held his finger to his lips and said, “The boy is gone.”

  Nellie pushed herself up. “What do you mean?”

  Next to her, Hilde was still asleep.

  Henrik whispered, “The boy. Bruno. He’s gone.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “I can’t see him anywhere. We were supposed to start training.”

  “Maybe he got really keen.” Bruno had not complained as much about getting up early recently.

  “I don’t think so. Come, have a look.”

  Nellie jumped to her feet and went to the place where Bruno had been sleeping with the other children. The children were all still there, fast asleep with rosy cheeks. During the last few nights, the dragon had slipped out of the barn during the night, and it no longer lay in the straw.

  Henrik had been right. Not just the prince was gone, but all of the possessions he had collected were gone as well, including the habit Gisele had given him to disguise himself as a monk. And including the dragon box.

  “Maybe he’s gone training,” Nellie said. She wasn’t hopeful that this would actually be the case. If he had taken those things, he was gone, and he was up to something.

  “Let’s check outside.” Henrik set off past the dying fire to the barn doors. He lifted the latch and opened the door. The sun hadn’t yet risen, and a soft mist hung over the pale fields. The hoar frost had turned the world into a white wonderland.

  It was completely silent, with not a sign of the prince or dragon.

  Nellie shivered, pulling her coat around her.

  Henrik crossed to the fence of the horse paddock. He pointed. “Look here.”

  Nellie went to see.

  In the frosted dead grass in the paddock were tracks of a very large animal. They went a number of paces into the white grass and then disappeared. The tracks were too broad to belong to any of the horses, and those stood very quietly down at the other end of the paddock.

  She met Henrik’s eyes. They both knew what it meant. These were paw prints of the dragon. Where they disappeared, the dragon had taken off.

  Henrik scratched his head. “I thought he was struggling to talk to the dragon, never mind climb onto its back.”

  “He managed to call it yesterday,” Nellie said.

  But either yesterday’s interaction had been more significant than she had realised, or he had been tricking them about how he couldn’t control the dragon all along.

  Either way Bruno was gone. “By the Triune, where do you think he is?”

  Henrik shrugged. “To kill the shepherd? To go to the palace? To find his father? Whatever, none of those things are good.”

  No, they weren’t. Not only that, but if they had any hope of defeating the shepherd and reinstating the royal family, they needed the dragon and Bruno.

  And what was more, she felt betrayed. Recently, she had assumed that people were right and that the dragon did listen to her. It was still a magical creature and did its own thing, but she thought she understood it better than anyone else. That it liked animals, that it attracted animals and would defend them, and that the way to
get it to defend you was to treat it well and be an honest person. But if Prince Bruno had lied about being able to interact with the dragon, then her understanding was a lie, too.

  She couldn’t imagine it.

  When Celine and Bruno were little, Li Fai would tell them stories of legendary dragons of the past, and Nellie had also heard versions of those stories from the sailors who used to work for Mistress Johanna’s father. Stories of the Great Just Dragon were too common for them to be based on a fallacy.

  Dragons stood up for people who did the right thing. That was a fact.

  Nellie and Henrik went back into the barn, where Agatha and Mina had woken up and started on breakfast.

  “Did anyone see Bruno leave?” Nellie asked them.

  Mina shook her head. “No. Did he leave?”

  “He took his possessions and the dragon.”

  Mina frowned. “Did he take any food?”

  That was a good question. “I don’t think so.”

  “Then he can’t have gone far.”

  Good old Mina always remained level-headed and practical.

  After a quick breakfast, Nellie and Henrik went out to see if they could find out more about where Bruno might have gone.

  First they went to the estate’s horse stables, where the stable master had noticed that the horses were very nervous early in the morning.

  “They’ve quietened down a lot now, mind, so whatever spooked them has gone.”

  Nellie and Henrik didn’t say anything about the dragon to these people. Lord Verdonck might suspect that they had it, but he hadn’t mentioned it since they arrived at the estate.

  They checked in the village where the estate’s workers lived, but everything was quiet there.

  They also checked in the shed that contained Madame Sabine’s balloons.

  The crates containing the fabric and other material still stood in the corner ready to be taken away.

  “It would be a pity if all this is lost,” Nellie said.

  Henrik scoffed. “I’m sure some rich noble in Lurezia will continue to make balloons. It’s of no concern to us.”

  “I think it is.”

  “How so?”

  She explained how an army could drop things on an enemy from the air.

  Henrik gave her a disturbed look.

  “When you’re in the air, no one can reach you, and no one can hear what you say.” And she knew this from the terrifying experience flying on the dragon’s back.

  “But that would be all the more reason to destroy this.”

  “Except that Lurezian nobles will continue with these balloons. And if they come to us with armies that have balloons, we want to have our own balloons.”

  He raised his eyebrows. “We?”

  “Well, Saardam in general. Because if invaders have balloons and use them to drop things on us, then we’ll be as defenceless as we are now against magic. And pretending this doesn’t exist isn’t going to stop other people using it.”

  “Isn’t one of the problems with the balloons that they go where the wind blows and you can’t control their path?”

  “It is. That’s why Madame Sabine and the old Lord Verdonck stole the dragon box: so that the dragon could pull the balloons like sea cows pull a boat. Except the dragon didn’t like it.” Because one had to earn the trust of a dragon before you could get it to do anything.

  “You could use something else to keep a balloon under control. You could use a boat. You could attach a long rope and let the balloon fly over the city while the boat stays at a safe distance.”

  Nellie nodded. One could also use another animal, like . . . an elephant. That might work for a circus troupe for the novelty of attracting a crowd.

  She sighed. “Anyway, first we need to find Bruno. If he’s gone in search of his father, then I don’t know that he’ll survive the journey. It’s a long way over the ocean to Anglia and it’s very, very cold up there.”

  She still shivered when she thought about her short adventure on the dragon’s back.

  Henrik shook his head. “I’m not sure he’s gone that far. In the past few days, he never stopped talking about how he was going to avenge his father and pay the church back for the time he spent locked up in the crypts. I think he’s gone to Saardam.”

  “Where he’s likely to get killed. Without him, there’s not much point trying to show the citizens of Saardam what Shepherd Wilfridus is doing to them. We might as well move to Lurezia.”

  “It’s not a nice place for foreigners, I hear.”

  “No, and I don’t want to move there, but Bruno is the only reason we can get the citizens behind us: if we have the rightful heir to the throne, they’ll support us.”

  “We’ll have to find him, before he gets himself into trouble. And don’t worry, Nellie, I’m not about to give up.”

  But nobody they met on the estate had seen anything out of the ordinary. They didn’t even find Madame Sabine’s horse any more.

  That was the clearest sign Nellie had seen that the dragon had left the area.

  There was only one thing left to be done. That was to inform Adalbert Verdonck himself and ask if he could offer any assistance.

  They walked down the tree-lined lane to the house, talking about what they would and would not say. Henrik agreed that it was best not to trust Adalbert Verdonck too much, because rich men are never your friends.

  But when they arrived at the house, it was to find that another visitor was already there, judging by the horse tied to a pole for that purpose outside. This animal was not a dopey farm horse, but a sleek brown horse that looked fast.

  Henrik eyed it suspiciously.

  “Do you know that horse?” Nellie asked. There was always a danger that someone from the city would be here and would recognise them.

  “No. But it looks like a military horse to me. It’s been a while since I was in the Army, but they used to have that type of saddlebag.”

  “Do you still want to go in?”

  “I’m not entirely sure. Maybe we should wait until the visitor departs.”

  But as he said that, the front door open and a man came out.

  Henrik pulled Nellie behind a big tree.

  The visitor was not a military man; at least, his long black coat didn’t look like a uniform, although his tall black boots might once have belonged to a soldier.

  He walked in quick strides, went down the steps to the gravel, untied the horse and climbed in the saddle. The horse took off at a trot.

  Henrik didn’t speak until he was halfway down the lane to the main road. “I know that man. It’s Sigfrid Emmel. He used to be a lieutenant when I was in the army. Retired with an injury and started his own mercenary army.”

  “Is his visit here a good thing or a bad thing?”

  “Adalbert Verdonck has served in the army, too. They could be friends. Or it could be a business meeting. I’m not sure.”

  “You’re not sure about many things today.”

  He sighed. “I guess it’s not my day, then.”

  She had noticed that he looked very tired and worried. “Apart from the fact that Bruno is gone, is anything else wrong?”

  “I have sworn to protect the boy,” he said. His face was haunted. “I’ve failed.”

  “You’ve sworn? Who did you promise that to?” This was the first Nellie heard of it.

  “His father. He also asked me not to tell anyone, but there’s not much point keeping it secret now.”

  “You were in contact with Li Fai in Anglia?”

  “Not me, but someone I know well was. A number of years ago, the boy’s father asked us to keep an eye on him after his mother had been killed. He knew what had happened, and although he was travelling, he was never able to come back to find his son, because his magic wouldn’t allow him to come into the country. We were aware that the boy’s body had never been found and became aware not much later that there was a good chance that the boy was still alive. To quell the rumours, the church ordered grave
s for both Bruno and Celine, but everyone knew there were no bodies in those graves. We even had both graves opened to prove it. So when Li Fai contacted us, we swore to protect him.”

  “Who is we?”

  “Myself and a group of friends. You may meet them at some point. They’re all guards.”

  “City guards or palace guards?”

  “Both. And some are ex-soldiers also.”

  “And did this group know that Prince Bruno was in the church crypts?”

  “We suspected he might spend some time there, but we know he also spent time in other places like some of the church’s monasteries that are closed to visitors. Once it became clear that you had freed him, it was my duty to protect him from his captors.”

  A light went on in Nellie’s mind. “That was why you came. I wondered why you made that bold move to jump onto the ship and shoot the Regent, but now I know.”

  “Not the only reason, but an important reason, yes.”

  “And here I was thinking that you came with us because of me.”

  “I’m sorry to disappoint you.”

  “So when you shot those arrows, you meant to kill the shepherd more desperately than the Regent?”

  “That’s true. But my main aim was to create enough chaos for us to be able to get away. I aimed for the Regent because he is a despicable man who allowed all this to take place, but I really wanted to kill the shepherd. Because I knew how much he would want to come after you and how much his death would solve. I swore to protect the prince, and did everything to ensure that people believed I only protected the regent.”

  So much of Henrik’s behaviour now made sense.

  When he was at the palace, he had been unable to agree with her because he was playing the role of the faithful guard.

  “So what are we going to do now?”

  “Knowing what we know about how the shepherd controls people with magic, we cannot allow Adalbert Verdonck to hire mercenaries to take the town by force. It would be a bloodbath. So I’m going to talk to him.”

  “I don’t really trust Adalbert Verdonck. Are we going to tell him the truth?”