Amaury, Prince Bishop of the United Church and First Minister of Mirabaya, looked out of his office window into the garden below. The king dallied there, in flagrante delicto with his latest flavour of the month, a young country noblewoman who still bore the innocence of a life spent far from court, an innocence that would wither and die after a few months in Mirabay. By then, King Boudain would have long finished with her. The king needed to marry soon, to create a political alliance that would increase his power, and provide him with an heir. It was time he set aside the frivolity of youth.
Amaury sighed. Not long ago, the king’s affairs had amused him no end. Now, levity was something he was finding increasingly difficult to come by. He had just received word that the people he had sent to Trelain to finish off dal Villerauvais and retrieve the Amatus Cup—some of the best members of his Order of the Golden Spur—had been found dead on the side of the road. Details were sketchy, and it sounded as though there had been little left of them by the time the remains were found. They should have been difficult to kill, so Amaury wondered who might be responsible for their deaths. It was worrying on a number of levels, and something he’d have to get to the bottom of, but later. For now it was simply another problem on a long, ever-growing list.
He had sent for Commander Leverre, but the man was conspicuously missing. Amaury had even sent a pigeon to Trelain, to see if Nicholas dal Sason could shed any light on the matter. He was in the dark on many things, and that was not a circumstance he appreciated.
He wondered if Guillot was dead, but suspected he was not. Dal Sason would have notified him if the job was done. If dal Sason had failed, it was likely he was dead. The Prince Bishop was beginning to feel quite careless in his application of manpower. In the past few weeks, the Order had suffered more casualties than in its previous entire existence. What was worse was that those killed had been the best available, meaning the talent he had so carefully gathered and nurtured was being diluted. If things continued like that, the Order would be wiped out before long, and with it, Amaury’s hope for the future. He would need to bolster its ranks with mercenaries, and make new officer appointments. Another set of problems for his list.
Amaury returned his attention to the king’s indiscreet behaviour in the garden below. Boudain was indolent, often idle, and were it not for his arrogance and stubbornness, the young king would have made an ideal figurehead, concealing someone more suited to ruling but happier in the shadows, where real power dwelled. As it was, he was proving trickier to manage than Amaury would have liked, at a time when his attention was needed elsewhere.
Perhaps he had been wrong to have the old king killed. Well, it was too late to regret that.
The Cup remained a tantalising solution to Amaury’s problems. That Gill appeared to have it was frustrating. Amaury had been right to counsel the old king to punish Gill harshly. He had it coming. Guillot’s supposedly careless sword stroke during the Competition had robbed Amaury of his dreams when they were little more than boys. He didn’t believe for a second that the blow had been an accident. Amaury had often considered settling the score once and for all, but he was always so busy. Then he’d had the king strike him down, and ever since, the Prince Bishop had comforted himself with the knowledge that Gill was rotting in obscurity.
It seemed, however, that the man was destined to be a thorn in Amaury’s side. It was long past time to pull it and destroy it. He was determined now that Gill would not see out the year.
Amaury knew it was foolish to view the Cup as the answer to all of his problems, but if it did what it was said to, it might very well be just that. He neither understood how the Cup worked, nor cared. All that mattered was that every scrap of information he had found about it unanimously agreed: it conferred on the person who drank from it a level of magical ability similar to that which they could have hoped for if they had trained from youth.
To think that the old Chevaliers of the Silver Circle had managed to lose the thing when transporting their treasury to a new headquarters somewhere in the southwest of the country was sobering. Dragons attacked and carried the gold away, along with the Cup, and it was all downhill for the Chevaliers after that.
From what Leverre had said, Guillot had stumbled on the Cup during an attempt to kill the dragon. Gill’s dumb luck again—why couldn’t Leverre or dal Sason have picked it up?
Amaury quelled his frustration. Perhaps dal Sason had killed Gill and the Cup was on its way to Mirabay at that very moment. He doubted it, somehow. He swore and turned from the window, tired of watching the king groping his new paramour like a sex-starved rabbit. Returning to his desk, the Prince Bishop considered practising shaping magic, but knew he was far too preoccupied to find the necessary clarity of thought.
He picked up a book he had taken from the secret archive on his last visit, in hope of finding distraction. Like everything else in the archive, the volume was extremely old; the thrill of discovering something long forgotten in its pages made Amaury’s skin tingle. He had first learned of the Cup in a similar book. This book dealt with dragons, which he had hitherto paid little attention to; now that they had encountered one, it had become a necessity. The presence of the creature made his need for the Cup all the more pressing, both for the power it could give him, and the fact that he could use it to create his own cabal of dragonslayers within the Order. If more of the beasts crawled out of the mountains, he would be ready to deal with them, and the Order would reap a huge amount of glory and adulation.
Amaury started to read, allowing the fascination of ancient secrets to embrace him and push his problems into the shade.
Gustav Vachon had never been one of those soldiers who hungered after fame for fame’s sake. Quite the opposite. Fame brought other fame-hungry bastards out of the woodwork, looking to kill you. Better off with a solid, reliable reputation, which brought plenty of work, without too many eyes watching. When you didn’t have a big public persona, you inevitably ended up doing the jobs the fellows with a big reputation couldn’t, but Vachon didn’t mind. They paid well, and he didn’t have much of a conscience to trouble him when he was trying to sleep.
The people of Grenaux did not share his sentiments when it came to fame. It was unusual for a village of peasants to have a reputation, but these had. The beef cattle of Grenaux and its surrounding farms had been called the “finest in Mirabay” at some point in the past by whoever had been king at that time. He had refused to eat any other. That meant the aristocracy did likewise. As demand increased, so too did price, which meant Grenaux had become a wealthy little commune that some bright spark had seen the sense in taking measures to protect. They dictated what could and could not be sold as Grenaux beef. They dictated the price, and until recently, had always offered up a dozen head of cattle each year to the king. An annual thank-you for the good fortune his ancestor had bestowed upon them. Therein lay the problem, and reason for Vachon’s current employment.
Vachon surveyed the village, wondering what the beef tasted like. He’d never been able to afford any. It was said there was a secret method to the raising of a Grenaux cow. Some said they were fed beer. Others said it was chestnuts, while others still whispered that it was magic. Vachon suspected it was simply the fact that the region around the village bore the lushest green grass he had seen in over two decades of campaigning around the world, and the cows were allowed to wander about, feeding as they saw fit. Whatever it was, a single Grenaux cow could fetch ten times the price of a beast only one valley over.
This year, someone in Grenaux had decided that the king ought to pay for his twelve head of Grenaux beef. That didn’t go down well at court. What fool ever expected a king to pay his way? Vachon had met that type before—he was the response to such folly. He admired the village’s fine stone buildings, testimony to the great wealth the cattle had brought them. The town’s grandeur was disturbed now by shouts and crashes and commotion.
His men were rounding up the villagers. Vachon hadn’t decided what to do with them yet—his instructions had been somewhat vague, as they often were. He knew what his lord and master wanted, and that he would never explicitly state it. Funny how the men ordering killing were often the most squeamish about discussing it.
He rode into the village’s centre. His job was primarily to collect the king’s tribute and to deliver a message. There was a delicate balance to the latter. The good people of Grenaux needed to learn that withholding the king’s tribute was no different than stealing from him. The lesson needed to hurt, so that they would remember it, and fear being taught it a second time. However, it had to be done without impacting the supply of beef, for that would inconvenience both the king’s dining table and his tax revenues.
His men had herded the villagers into a tight group, allowing Vachon enough space to ride around them at a slow pace, giving them plenty of time to consider the error of their ways. Once he had completed his loop, he stopped and spoke.
“By order of His Highness King Boudain the Tenth, I am commanded to collect the tribute owing to him, twelve head of finest Grenaux cattle. I am also instructed to impose fines for the withholding of said tribute.” He studied the people staring back at him, seeing a mix of fear and defiance on their faces. “The fine is money or goods equal in value to the tribute owing. Who is the mayor of this village?”
No one stepped forward. Vachon nodded to one of his men, who pulled a townsman at random from the crowd and punched him hard in the stomach. The man crumpled to his knees.
“The mayor of this village. To encourage him to step forward, the next one gets a blade, not a fist.”
A man pushed his way through the press of bodies.
“I’m the mayor.”
“No longer.”
Another of Vachon’s men seized him.
“Let this be a lesson,” Vachon said. “Disobeying the king is treason.” He pointed to a building that overlooked the square, separated a bit from the buildings on either side. One of his men got to work with a torch and tinder. The flame lit, he went inside. He emerged a moment later, followed by thick black smoke. Destroying the village was counterproductive. The king wanted his beef and his taxes. Razing Grenaux to the ground would get him neither. One building, though? A disobedient mayor?
Vachon nodded to the soldier who held the former mayor, who then bundled the man into the burning house. Two others closed the door and set to nailing it shut. A few of the defiant ones in the crowd surged forward, but some rough handling from his men ensured they quickly learned the error of their ways. Screams started from the building a moment later. Vachon’s men were alert and ready. This was the tipping point. If the villagers were going to turn on them, it would happen when they thought their mayor could still be saved. He sat atop his horse, hand on the hilt of his sword, and watched them with cold, remorseless eyes until the screaming stopped.
“We will wait outside the village for you to bring the cattle. Do not delay and force us to return.”