Conquests and Crowns

by S E Meliers

  ‘An heir?’ Cinder was astonished. ‘A bastard heir?’

  ‘- You being disinclined to remarry,’ Gallant continued, ‘and thus currently being without one. A precarious situation, I remind you, what with your glorious work in spreading the Monadistic faith being so perilous,’ he pursed his lips disapprovingly. ‘A bastard may be the best we can get.’

  Cinder considered; then shrugged. The idea had merit. ‘What if I remarry in the future?’ he pondered. ‘The child will end up just another royal bastard, penniless and worthless.’

  ‘I have anticipated your concerns, my Prince,’ Gallant steepled his fingers. ‘If the child is male, he will inherit Amori -’

  ‘I am sure the lady is thrilled with that suggestion,’ Cinder snorted.

  ‘ - If the child is female, Charm retains Amori. He will, of course, be a dutiful half-brother and provide a suitable dowry for the girl when the time comes for her to wed, as he will be provided for in the event of a male child. Altogether, not a bad outcome for Charm, I would think, considering he is the son of the defeated Lord of the Amori, and we would be most sensible if we simply disposed of him.’

  Cinder frowned. The killing of children was not something he relished, though he acknowledged that it had its practicalities in times of war. He had no intention of inhabiting Amori indefinitely, however, and someone needed to rule it. He could give it to a Shoethalian lord, but he had only recently unified Shoethal and in doing so weeded the nobility down to those vassals he was allied with or valued enough to extend mercy to, re-distributing the holdings as required; they could not effectively rule more then they currently held. Mercy given to a child could result in that child growing into a loyal vassal, thus Charm lived so Cinder could see the nature of the man he would become. This was a matter of dispute between himself and the Priest who had suggested using Charm to force the mother to convert and marry the daughter to a Shoethalian. Cinder preferred to retain this as an option if Charm did not turn out.

  ‘We are not disposing of Charm,’ he said, shortly ending the subject.

  Gallant shrugged with a sneer: ‘As you wish, my Prince.’

  There was a moment of awkward silence, and Gallant seemed disinclined to ease it, so Cinder found he was forced to push the conversation forward: ‘If the Lady had refused what then?’ he snapped, irritably.

  ‘Then we would know she has not truly converted to the Monad, as any true convert would be happy to follow His will.’ There was a warning for Cinder there, but the Priest was surreptitious about it. ‘Thus, I would be forced to encourage a true conversion using other means.’

  Cinder scowled. He did not agree with some of the methods used to encourage conversion, but he could not pursue it as doing so would proving himself to be undevout; a nice trap, if ever he saw one.

  ‘The Lady capitulated, with only a little vacillation, to the Monad’s will and thus is attending your chambers,’ the Priest concluded, losing interest in the subject. He rested his hands upon the stone wall and drew in a relishing breath. ‘Lovely, is it not? The view from here is truly superb. And the air; so fresh. Trust the dragons to find the primest location and claim it for their own. Creatures of unerring taste; dragons.’

  ‘You are fascinated with the critters,’ Cinder pinched the bridge of his nose still battling with distaste. ‘I always know where to find you no matter the city we occupy.’

  Gallant laughed, with sincerity. ‘They terrify me, to be honest, my Prince,’ he said. ‘Their scales are sharp as knives; their spines designed to impale; their claws can shatter stone; their breath can be burning flame or toxic ash. They attack from above on silent wings and rip your face off; or they can lure you in with their hypnotic eyes and then char you to the bone. In a heartbeat. In fact, there is no more deadly creature in this world,’ he shook his head in wonderment. ‘Add a female dragon rider – and they prefer them female, as you know – with all their edacity, and dragons are possibly the most terrifying thing a man can ever face.’

  ‘If they are so terrifying, why are you always where they are?’ Cinder was intrigued by the man.

  Gallant smiled. ‘Because they are beautiful, my Prince, and things of beauty must always be appreciated by man.’ He turned abruptly and strode across the courtyard. Cinder gritted his teeth and followed. ‘I have instructed the Lady Patience to speak to her people,’ Gallant announced as they walked. ‘She will advise of her Lord’s demise, and her conversion. Her sanction of our presence here will greatly calm the populace. So, pray, my Prince, in your ardour, do not mar her pretty face.’

  Cinder snarled.

  Praise

  It had not taken long for Praise to learn an important lesson about the pervasive nature of hunger. She had done little else since her arrival in Amori but search for sustenance. Hunger overrode the need for hygiene, modesty, shelter, pride.

  Starvation was a slow way to die, she had realised, and a terrible one when a person was literally surrounded by food. She could steal some, but she feared being caught. She had seen the way the Rhyndelian’s dealt with theft shortly after she had arrived in Amori, and she had quickly decided that she liked her hands too much to part with them, therefore proving it to be an effective deterrent. She had tried to obtain work, but possessed no special skill to make her employable over the preferred native Rhyndelians and there were so many people looking for work that employers could be choosy for even the most menial of tasks.

  She had had plenty of opportunity during the nights on the street to watch the whores at work, and placed the occupation at one step up from having one’s hand cut off for stealing. She was not that desperate yet. She had found a bakery that gave away old bread at sunset each day to the many hungry on Amori streets, but they gave first to children, and whilst not far out of childhood, Praise was an adult, and there was enough adult competition for what was left that Praise received survival’s rations only, not enough to stay her hunger long.

  Each day saw a market in the main square of town, where local farmers and tradesmen could display their wares for sale. She tried, at daybreak, to convince the stall owners to employ her, with no success. At dusk, she stood outside the bakery with too many others waiting for a morsel of bread. At evening she roamed the streets, searching refuse for discarded food along with all the other rag pickers. At night, she huddled in the darkest shadows hoping to escape the attentions of drunkards, thugs, and other night-time predators. With every day that passed, she wondered how many more she had in her to survive.

  Sometimes she wept for her family, for the memories of home, and the tears made tracks through the grime that now coated her fair skin.

  When the air had been rent by fire, screams, and armoured men who cut down all who stood in their path in great swaths of blood, she had narrowly escaped death by hiding up on the rooftop of the nearest building – the rooves of Amori being a refuge she had discovered when she was new to the desperation of the streets and had been strong, fresh from the farm and a solid diet of good food, so that climbing the outside of the buildings had been easy. Weeks of hunger and want had passed since her arrival, and only sheer terror had given her the strength to clamber up high. From her hard-gained perch she had possessed a unique viewpoint from which to watch Amori’s fall in relative safety, and she had stayed there long after a lull had fallen, until day and then night had passed, until hunger and thirst drove her to risk the precarious climb down, forcing her back into roaming the streets.

  Sheltered by a deep doorstep, she watched with despondency as the sunrise pushed back into the deepest shadows the depravity and desperation of the homeless and other night-walkers. As the sky lightened once more from grey to blue, the first stall owners arrived to set up shop for the day, life and the need to provide for their families continued in the lower echelons of society, regardless of who was in power in the castle. The door’s owner, upon discovering her presence, shooed her on her way with a broom, forcing her to untangle her legs and arms, and to stagger out into t
he bright daylight. Her foreignness had always worked against her, but now that she had a layer of filth on her skin and clothes, and the gauntness of near starvation, the reaction of shop and stall owners was not just dismissal but dismay that she could turn off any customers by her presence near their business, and she was always hurried away.

  Hopeless, she collapsed into the shadows with the others of her ilk and watched vicariously as those, to whom life had been more kind, devoured the stores’ wares. She did not pay more than the most rudimentary attention of her companion until a slender hand pro-offered a slightly dented apple. She stared at the apple, the hand, and the woman in disbelief. ‘Take it,’ the woman said quietly. She was dressed in rags, but Praise knew, with a canniness that she owed to living on the streets, that it was a disguise rather than a reality for her. The hand that offered the apple was too clean, the nails pink and white where Praise’s had long taken on a black/brown hue, and the rags she wore did not smell with the quite the same intense body odour of clothing worn day in and out due to no choice. The woman’s hair was hidden by a ragged cowl drawn right forward to cast shadows over her face. With her head bowed, she could have been any gender, any age - it was a good disguise, as long as no attention was drawn to cause closer inspection.

  Praise only hesitated a moment. ‘Thank you,’ she said, before biting into the apple. It was the most wondrous flavour she had ever tasted, crisp, juicy, sweet, bathing her mouth in its freshness. She devoured with the quick efficiency of one used to having her meal snatched from her fingertips by the more powerful. It was not until she had finished her last mouthful, that she felt that something was wrong. A strange tingling possessed her limbs, fading quickly into a terrible numbness. ‘Wha-’ Praise found she could not control her tongue.

  ‘You are going to be very mad at me, no doubt, and with reason,’ the woman murmured absently, her eyes fixed on a distant point. Her eyebrows and eyelashes were so pale they were almost invisible against her fair skin Praise noted, unable to look away. ‘But you must understand that sometimes what seems to be an evil is actually a good, if you have the advantage of time and distance with which to review it,’ her eyes were so pale a blue as to be grey.

  She pushed herself to her feet, dusting her hands off on her ragged robes. ‘Come along now,’ she said to Praise, who found herself standing as if pulled by a string. ‘We have a fair way to go, much to do, and not much time in which to get it all done. Follow along.’

  She set a hurried pace, leading Praise through the rambling streets of the poorer corners of Amori, ripe with the smell of tanners, soap makers, body odour, and waste. They crossed, briefly, a wealthier street, whose cobble stones were so evenly laid as to barely disturb the carriage wheels of the wealthy as they rode past, before approaching a squat, square building made of dark stone. There, the woman knocked on a door heavy with thick iron bars. A little window opened behind the bars, and a face briefly peered out at them, before it slammed shut again. The woman seemed to expect this, as she stepped to one side and pulled Praise to face her. ‘Now: the spell will slowly fade,’ the woman said in a hurried whisper. ‘And when it does, you will regain freedom of movement. You will find yourself in a precarious position, no doubt, by that time. Be polite, and you might survive.’

  Be polite? Praise was sure that when she regained use of her tongue, she’d be anything but polite.

  The door opened suddenly behind them. A man with a large bald head, not too many teeth, and a bulbous nose, leered out at them. ‘Here is the one you wanted; a lot of trouble she has been, I am glad to part with her,’ he said, his breath fetid. ‘This the one you promised in return?’ His rotundness was covered in a rather gory leather apron as he thrust a young brunette woman, excessively chained at both wrists and feet and then together, out of the door.

  The brunette staggered, blinking in the sunlight, and glowered hostilely at Praise’s captor. ‘You!’

  ‘Yes,’ the woman’s response could have been to either comment; ‘I am not at all surprised that you had an entertaining time with Lovel, Gat; she has a truculent disposition. You will find this one easy enough to manage for a little while longer, at least. Come along,’ she turned to Praise. ‘And remember: be polite.’ Inside, Praise was clawing the brick wall behind her, fighting and screaming for aid, but externally, she stepped forward meekly at the woman’s instruction.

  ‘Yes,’ the leather apron bared his rotting teeth in what might have been a friendly smile. ‘Come along,’ he stepped back through the doorway and she had no choice but to follow him. Inside was dark and cool. She heard the door clang shut behind her. ‘Walk to the end of the hall and go down the stairs,’ she knew he was behind her by the smell even before he spoke. Her body walked on obediently. The stairs were narrow and steep, and lit from below.

  ‘You should be happy,’ he panted as they navigated the stairs. ‘Is supposed to be an honour. A’course, they’re a picky lot, and if they do not like you, you get eaten, but if they like you, well, that is different, eh? Go straight at the bottom.’ It was a narrow tunnel, lit periodically by torches - long but not long enough for her liking considering the unknowns of her destination. Air vents in the stone ceiling let in natural light as well as fresh air, but not enough to keep the tunnel smokeless. Her eyes stung and began to weep. ‘Do not cry,’ he said, noticing. ‘It is not that bad a death, really. I’ve seen worse in the last few days. Those Priests, they can do nasty things to a body. There are people in the dungeons that I do not know how they are still alive, and yet the Priests keep them breathing somehow.

  ‘You sort of have to admire that though – it takes some skill to keep a person alive when they are in so many pieces.’ He pondered that for a moment then shrugged it off. ‘But they will hurt anyone, you know, the Priests. Even small children and it takes a cold heart to hurt a little child that has done nothing but suck its mother’s milk so far in life. It makes my gut curdle, and I have been an executioner for two decades. Go up the stairs at the end and open the door at the top.’

  The stairs took a lot of effort for him, so he was silent except for pants and groans. She opened the door into daylight. It was a courtyard on the edge of the cliffs. Behind them, in all its splendour, was ranged the rambling towers of Amori and before them, the single spear of the watchtower framed by the walkway wall. The area between was paved and occupied. There were servants hurriedly busy, and a hideously scarred man in the red robes of the Priests of the Monad. And there were the dragons.

  Suddenly the executioner’s words made a dreadful sort of sense.

  ‘Go forward and stand near the dragons where the cobblestones are red,’ the executioner panted. Red with what? she thought, horrified. ‘And good luck,’ he added just before the door swung shut. He retreated back into the safety of the passage whilst her disobedient body moved inevitably towards the massive tangle of dragon limbs.

  The executioner’s last instruction left Praise within arm’s reach of a blue leg. She noted, grimly, that the cobblestones were meant to be yellow, like all the others and the red tone of where she stood was the result of the dragon’s last meal. She closed her eyes and prayed; however, with her eyes closed, the slithering grate of dragon scale on rock was even more disturbing. There was a scent, like putting one’s head inside the fireplace after the fire had well and truly gone out, of deep burnt things. She opened her eyes, finding dark contemplation of her fate even more terrifying, and found herself face to face with the massive angular, reptilian head of a scarlet dragon that had separated itself from the tangle of dragons.

  Be polite, the woman had said. Praise was sure it was rude to simply stand and stare.

  ‘Hello Dragon,’ she whispered at long last, relieved to find her voice had returned.

  The red snorted a puff of warm air over her, bathing her in sulphurous scent. ‘Mmmmmm, dinner talks to me…’ it did not talk, in the way she understood talking, but it’s voice rumbled deep within her bones, death and glory wrapped in silk.
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  ‘I am not dinner,’ she corrected desperately. ‘I am a visitor.’

  ‘Visiting whom exactly?’ The radiant red stretched out its membranous wings languidly. It was surprisingly lithe and light on its clawed feet for a creature so large, the slide of muscles beneath scaled skin sensuous. It tucked itself neatly into a cat-like crouch, fencing her in between dragon pile, cliff top, and castle wall, before lowering its nose to her and sniffing. ‘The smell is terrible,’ it commented.

  ‘I have been homeless for a while – it has been hard to bathe,’ she apologised mindless with terror. ‘I have seen you fly over the city. You are really as terrifying close up as you seem from far below.’

  ‘Thank you,’ the dragon was dryly amused. She had the advantage of nearness to observe through her bowel clenching fear that its eyes were blue, an almost human blue, but without whites.

  ‘Are you going to eat me?’ she managed to voice to the most vital of her fears.

  ‘Hmmmm,’ it considered. ‘We shall see how you clean up, first.’

  ‘Clean - ’ A razor clawed fist closed around her middle and she fell through the air towards a sea of red, before landing, grazing chin, palms and legs on rough scales as she slithered, only managing at the last second to cling to a spiny ridge and not fall to the ground. Almost before she had realised her hold, muscles tensed beneath her and the massive dragon launched itself into the air. She desperately swung her body up onto the spine of the dragon, perched between two sharply pointed ridges. There was just room enough for one small girl between, and, as the bases of the ridges were not sharp like the tips, she scooted her bottom back firmly against the one behind, and lay with her belly on dragon hide and arms around the ridge in front, leaning slightly to one side.