Chapter Nine Claire
Evidently, abundant access to translations of L’Histoire des étoiles is not enough to educate the public about the importance of preventive measures against Diu’s curse.
I hereby grant the Council of Cardinals their request for a federal stipend to begin pilgrimages across Florent. Spread the good word!
Chapter Nine
Claire
The splintering signpost on the side of the road reads: Jordes Town Limit.
If one can call it a town. Jordes offers little more than a cluster of creaky storefronts in desperate need of new roof tiles.
A tackle shop, a dove aviary, and a few fishing boats tied to the single dock.
It’s not so much a town as it is a fishing outpost nestled in an alcove along the Tordou River.
To the dismay of my sore feet, no horses.
This is the perfect spot to get away with murder.
“It’s too open here. We should go north, away from the river,” I suggest. “It’s the harder route, but less predictable.”
“We’re not leaving here without warning the Gendarmerie first.”
“There is no Gendarmerie here. It’s a ghost town.”
“There.” Abel points to the aviary. “We’ll send a dove back to the Gendarmerie station in Bourlin. They can dispatch a force to investigate the attack on Ravinfort.”
“One of those attackers could use the opportunity to kill you.”
“It’ll only take a minute.”
“What happened to learning how to protect yourself from people?”
“I’m sworn to protect Florent. Whether from dragons or murderers, that doesn’t change.”
I worry my lip. Apart from an elderly fisherman sorting through his tackle box on the dock, the town is eerily empty.
Fall must be off-season for fishing here.
A few doves coo on the aviary’s roof, but inside, an attacker might be lying in wait.
A warning isn’t worth sending if it means getting ambushed.
Abel is about to step out from the bushes when I set a hand on his shoulder. Lucy cocks her head at us. Abel gives me a weary look, emphasized by the specks of mud in his blond hair.
“Someone’s coming,” I whisper.
A tall man emerges on the trail opposite our hiding spot.
His youthful dark skin suggests he’s close to us in age, but he has a full head on Abel.
A leather cord pulls his coiled hair away from his face.
Tunic sleeves rolled up to his elbows expose his muscular forearms. He sticks a strip of venison between his teeth and rips off a piece.
But his footfalls are heavy. His dark eyes stare unfocused at the ground, as if his mind is trapped elsewhere.
When a dove flies over his head, he ducks fast, as if avoiding a throwing dagger.
The movement nearly topples him under the weight of his bulging travel pack.
Carefully, I step behind a tree, feeling for the moondagger I tucked down my bodice. Appearances don’t fool the Dames Blanches. Nervous behavior is an effective lure to draw sympathy from a mark. He could be one of the attackers, his cloak and mask inside that pack.
“Lyle!” Abel shouts.
“Stop!” I hiss, but he ignores me. In the time that I blink, he’s running.
Lyle…That name rings a bell. The moonmetal smith from Ravinfort! I chase after Abel, Lucy beside me. At the same time, I flip the dagger up, inside my sleeve. We may have found a friend, but I’m not taking any chances this close to Ravinfort.
When Abel reaches him, Lyle rights his posture. The worry lines vanish from his face as he bursts with laughter. A complete attitude reversal that instantly makes me think: Liar. Of course, I could be wrong. Abel won’t be happy with me if I don’t at least try to play along.
“Who put you through a meat grinder?” Lyle’s northern accent hangs thickly from each consonant. When I stop beside them, he gives me a once-over, then cracks a smirk at his friend. “Where are your manners, Abel? Your girl is too beautiful to drag through the forest.”
To be fair, we look dreadful. Leaves are tangled in my hair, and mud cakes our boots.
My breeches are smudged from constantly wiping my hands on them after touching a filthy tree trunk or climbing over a rock.
Even my chemise sleeve hangs off one shoulder.
It’s so damp, I couldn’t make it sit properly under the bodice.
This isn’t my most voguish look, to say the least.
I tug my sleeve suggestively over my shoulder and cast Lyle a wink. “Abel doesn’t give me much time to rest.”
“She’s a client,” Abel clarifies.
“Not without benefits.”
Abel rubs his face and looks away. I giggle. Too easy.
“We’re hunting the Sellecastel dragon,” he grumbles.
“Circumstances aside, pleased to meet you, mademoiselle.” Lyle takes my hand when I offer it and kisses my knuckles. “Lyle Meteku, at your service.”
“Claire Belgard.” I smile. “Pleasure.”
“You’re in great hands with Abel. Trust me. He and I go way back to our training days.”
“Oh?” I say, placating him. The more he speaks, the more behavior I can sample. “How did you two meet?”
“The Guild requires young slayers to pair up with apprentice smiths to pass a weapon design and durability test. He picked me.” He gives Abel a wry glance. “Granted he only did so because Hanna picked a famous smith’s son before he could.”
Abel retorts, “No, I picked you because your parents raised you with a better work ethic than the existing competition. You were the smarter choice.”
Lyle chews his venison thoughtfully. “True. I did lead you to your only victory over Hanna.”
Quite the talker. Justifiable in front of a pretty girl, but more understandable if he has a secret or two.
And combined with the boastful language?
He’s putting on an image. It’s what I do.
But he speaks too fast and too much. That suggests inexperience in the art of deception—and reeks of desperation.
Abel won’t see what I see without some prodding.
I lightly tap his boot with mine. Tell him, I mouth.
“Lyle,” he says eventually, “we just escaped an attack on Ravinfort. A group of killers seems to be targeting the slayer industry.”
His face falls. “Killers?”
“I didn’t see your mother. Was she traveling with you? Or—”
“She’s alive. She’s safe.” Lyle’s voice breaks. “Just…tell me what happened to Ravinfort.”
“Everything’s gone. The archives. Your workshop. The du Fay castle.” Abel’s hands form fists at his sides. “Hanna was murdered right in front of me. Do you know if any of the other du Fays were out on a hunt?”
“Hanna said her brothers were staying local for a while.” Lyle makes a pleading gesture. “Are you sure they didn’t survive?”
“If they were home, then the du Fays are all dead. Even the gendarmes. If it hadn’t been for Claire, I’d be dead too. I don’t think anyone got out alive but us.”
“Gods,” Lyle whispers. “Gods. They’re all dead?”
I level my stare on him. “Pardon my bluntness, but why weren’t you killed?”
“Claire,” Abel warns. “Lyle doesn’t need an interrogation.”
“I need information. Do you want me to keep you safe or not?”
Lyle seems harmless, but in my line of work, that doesn’t make a person innocent. He’s less than a day’s walk from Ravinfort. The attackers might’ve let him slip away for a nefarious reason.
“It’s okay, Abel,” Lyle replies. “I’ve been out of town for a few weeks. I’d been up north moving Ma back to her old house in Varsonne. Just now I was headed home to Ravinfort.”
“Why would Madame Afi want to move so far away?” Abel asks, sounding hurt.
“I think she’s been feeling her own mortality lately. She wanted to live near Pa’s grave again. She’s been depressed since…you know.”
A somber look passes between them.
“Does she seem happier there?” Abel asks.
Lyle’s expression fractures—for a beat. “She’s better.
More motivated to work, at least. The Guild gave her some raw materials to keep her hands busy.
” He shakes his bag. It clacks as if full of weaponry.
“Lucky for me, Pa’s forge still worked. I managed to make some new inventory while I was there. ”
Abel brightens. “Do you have a long sword?”
“You bet. The best one I’ve forged.”
“Pardon us for a moment,” I say sweetly, pulling Abel away by the sleeve until we’re in the shade of a tree, out of earshot.
“What is it?” he asks.
“Something’s strange about his story. He just helped his mother move to the northernmost city in the kingdom, yet he’s conveniently carrying a sack full of merchandise?”
“Strange doesn’t mean suspicious. Lyle is not our enemy.”
“Anyone can become an enemy under the right conditions.”
“What are you implying?”
“I don’t know, honestly. But those killers are obviously targeting the Slayers Guild, so finding a supplier this close to a decimated outpost feels orchestrated. Like a trap.”
“A trap for what? Lyle is my friend. He wouldn’t set me up under any circumstances.
Besides, we don’t have a choice. I only have daggers left, and it could take weeks to find another moonmetal smith.
” He shakes his head when I open my mouth to argue.
“This benefits you, too. Your dragon will likely kill me if I’m not better equipped. ”
I press my lips together, tugging at my ponytail as I survey our too-tranquil surroundings. Lucy sniffs along the dock. The lone fisherman tosses her a minnow. She paws at it. When it wiggles, she scampers back to my side.
Are we really safe to linger here?
“It doesn’t matter anyway,” I say finally. “After buying those horses, we’re nearly out of coin, and there’s barely anyone here to pickpocket.”
Abel frowns. He knows I’m right.
“If this is about money, I don’t need it,” Lyle calls out to us.
Abel returns to him. Reluctantly, I follow. If the items are free, it’s quicker to let him take what he wants so we can leave.
Lyle digs through his pack and reveals the sheathed long sword. Abel draws it for a look. It gleams like steel, but there’s a strange depth to the color. Freshly forged moonmetal sparkles more than I expected.
“It’s perfect,” Abel says, sheathing it. “Thank you.”
“I have something even better for you,” Lyle adds. He withdraws two more items from the pack: a shackle-shaped object and a thick envelope of parchment. He offers the envelope first. “Since Hanna is gone, you should take this.”
I intercept it. “What’s inside?”
“The human identity of Hanna’s next target.”
Dread ices my stomach.
“You’re kidding.” Abel snatches the envelope from my fingers and pulls out the contents. Upon skimming the first lines, he runs a hand through his hair. The smile playing at the corner of his lips makes my blood run cold.
“Why would you even have that?” I ask.
“Identity records can impact equipment design,” Lyle explains, then looks to his friend. “Thorough, isn’t it?”
“Hanna and I were tracking the same target.” Abel turns his smile to me, shaking the papers in disbelief. “This is the dragon that attacked Bourlin. I’ll find your dragon eventually, but we’re taking a detour.”
No. I need him to prioritize my hunt, or masked murderers are the least of my concerns. He could end up killed by a dragon that has nothing to do with me, whether he intends to cure it or not.
“Get another slayer to do it.” I slip into an excuse. “I didn’t agree to fund you for two targets.”
His excitement sours. “This dragon has killed dozens of people already. With Hanna gone, I’m best prepared to apprehend it before it catches anyone off guard. Leaving it for another slayer would be irresponsible.”
“I hired you first!”
“Client cases aren’t handled in order. They’re prioritized according to success probability,” he continues coolly. “I have a dragon’s identity, which is as close to a guaranteed slaying as it gets. Just because you want to accompany my hunt doesn’t mean I’ll track your target first.”
Desperate words stick in my throat. No, Abel. I’m as close to guaranteed as it gets. But it’s not safe for me to confess that yet. Not until I can determine his reason for hunting again.
Lyle offers the moonmetal contraption next.
“What’s this?” Abel asks, taking it.
“It was for Hanna. That shackle was her design,” Lyle explains. “She commissioned it a few weeks ago. Prepaid, so it’s yours.”
The shackle disturbs me, but I feign innocent curiosity. I need to know what I’m facing, should Abel turn on me. “Why is it sized for a human arm?”
“It fits around the elbow joint.”
“But what does it do?”
“Dragon anatomy shifts in a specific order. The scapula sprouts the wing’s membrane, but the arm provides the skeletal structure.
” Lyle flips a lock mechanism and splits the shackle’s two halves apart, revealing sawlike blades that clamp down on whatever is inside.
“Think of this like a tourniquet. The tighter it gets, the more it digs in. As the bones expand, the force will push the elbow against the blade and amputate it below the humerus. That way, the dragon will enter the Ignition with a severed wing.”
“How long until the wing regrows?” Abel asks.
“That I don’t know. Hanna had intended to document it across several targets. Clever girl, wasn’t she?”
“Yes,” Abel says quietly. “Hanna was clever.”
The soft tone of his voice jars me, so at odds with the slayer who speaks of experiments, weapons, and amputations. If he mourns Hanna, then he must’ve cared for her once. He might’ve even loved her.
Lyle gives the shackle to Abel. “Help yourself to any other equipment I have. You can pay me once you catch up on bounties.”
Abel raises an eyebrow. “You’re sure about that?”
“Now that Ravinfort is gone, I have to travel all the way back to Varsonne. You’ll be doing me a favor by lightening my pack.”
Abel considers the shackle, then sorts it into his stash with a myriad of Lyle’s other merchandise: a crossbow, a quiver of bolts, and a few spare daggers. Finally, he fixes the long sword to his back and lays his pack over it, squaring his shoulders for the journey.
This is a nightmare.
Hanna’s hunting information guarantees Abel will be pitted against a dragon upon the next Ignition. Two of them, if I don’t find sleep powder in time. I need to retake control of my con, or Lyle will steal him from my proximity.
I point to a bench overlooking the docks. “Sit down for me.”
Lyle’s eyes widen. “Who, me?”
“Yes, you. I have questions.”
Lyle takes to the bench. Nothing suspicious happens at first. There.
A single bob of his knee. A flicker of pale knuckles on curled fists.
Lucy looks very cute as she nips his trousers, but he makes himself a little too preoccupied with petting her.
The longer he holds his smile, the more it quivers.
Those reflexes would seem trivial to anyone else. Even to me, they provide no more than a hunch. But the Dames Blanches taught me not to ignore them.
I open my mouth to question him. To my shock, Abel speaks first.
“Enough of this farce, Lyle,” he says. “What are you hiding?”