Chapter Four Claire
The story of the Dames Blanches is purely anecdotal, but it represents a crucial point: Greed has a way of hiding in plain sight, so long as we call it something else.
—Sermon on The Tale of Stars (L’Histoire des étoiles), Part II: The Book of Dark Days
Chapter Four
Claire
He needed a leg up.
The mare’s lead in one hand and my gelding’s reins in the other, I peek at Abel over my shoulder. Lucy sniffs his ear from her perch. I snicker when he hides behind his map. Could he be easier to read? He’s obviously burying his humiliation in checking directions.
“Shouldn’t noble boys know how to ride?” I tease.
“Slayers aren’t nobles.”
“You’re high society. And you’re dodging the question, monsieur.”
He fake coughs. “Slayers are partial to carriages. Our training consumes too much time to learn beyond the basics.”
I hum my skepticism. Plenty of slayers are excellent equestrians. My guess? Those carriages were kinder to his delicate, rich-boy rear. Too bad the family coffers dried up.
“So.” He gives me a scrutinizing look. “If you’re to assist with my work, I should know more about you. What’s your story?”
A breeze caresses my cheeks, and I turn my face toward it. “I was born on a horse’s back, running with four legs before walking on two, eating dust before my first spoonful of solid food.”
“You’re a poet?” he deadpans.
“You think farm girls can’t be literate?”
“Far from it. You claim to speak the Old Tongue.”
“Key word: speak. Do tell me, monsieur. What is a book?”
“I get it. You read. Did you have a previous occupation?”
“Horse trainer, same as Papa.” I tilt my head. “Though perhaps I neglected to teach them literacy.”
Abel sighs. “Forget it.”
I laugh. “You’re the one who questioned a known liar. Let’s maintain a professional distance, shall we?”
Everything I leave unsaid strains my smile, so I look ahead and scratch my horse’s neck. He flicks an ear back in recognition, which eases the tension in my chest. Animals offer the most honest, unconditional affection there is.
I’ll admit it—after I became cursed, I did question whether I deserved to live.
When wealthy horse buyers came to our farm, I admired their silk frocks, ribbons, and chiffon petticoats.
My clothes were patched and repurposed, my accessories nonexistent.
Just strips of twine to tie my hair back, and hands filthy from barn chores.
Our means must’ve looked humble, considering how often they inspired noble boys to court me with expensive gifts.
Days after buying a gray mare, one particularly eager boy helped me finish shoveling manure just so he could gift me the latest style of wide-brim feathered hat before the suns set.
That night, Papa caught me wearing it—and my late maman’s nicest day dress—in front of the mirror. A pained and distant emotion cut into his smile. The only time I’d seen that expression on him was when I was old enough to learn that sometimes mamans die during childbirth.
“That boy is sweet on you,” he teased. It sounded forced.
“Stop, Papa,” I said, but I removed the hat. “You say that about every boy who talks to me.”
“His parents have arranged him a suitress, ma petitoune.”
“He doesn’t want her,” I protested, then conceded, “He’s only here for the summer anyway.”
Papa lost his smile. “Just don’t get too greedy, or Diu will turn you into a dragon.”
I enjoyed the boy’s gifts, certainly, but I didn’t need a wardrobe stuffed with feathers and furs fit for the queen. At the end of the day, there were far greedier people than me.
Anyone can succumb to the Ignition—one in one hundred thousand people turns every month. Yet out of all the people who deserved the curse tenfold, Diu thought my moral compass pointed back to the violent Dark Days.
Abel isn’t wrong to question me, but I’m more than a con artist. I’m a survivor in a land that wants me dead. So why would I show restraint now? I’ve already been punished.
He can keep his judgments about who I am to himself.
A week after I lost Papa, Anne-Sophie saved me from myself.
The charred jewelry box I’d salvaged from the remains of Sellecastel’s largest farmhouse dug into my arms as I hugged it protectively, barefoot and shivering in a threadbare dress I stole from the wreckage of a neighbor’s house.
Seagulls cawed and swooped from the sails of a schooner marked with a Florentian flag.
The flag—a circle of stars on blue and red stripes—snapped against a gray sky.
Sailors laughed while the birds flurried in a battle for bread scraps.
The city of Port-de-Chance jarred me with all of its activity.
So many eyes to witness my actions. I hurried across the boardwalk, where a pawnshop waited.
Just then, a crowd rushed to greet a muscular, clean-shaven man in full dragon-scale uniform.
He paused his approach to the ramp of the nearest ship.
His green eyes gleamed with satisfaction.
“étienne Houdin,” his admirers whispered. “A hero among slayers.”
Stories of étienne Houdin’s successes had always spread like wildfire, all the way to rural Sellecastel. Witnesses had lauded his attention to detail. Rumors said the man was a walking duplicate of the Slayers Guild’s many archive buildings. No one knew more about dragons than him.
The pawnshop would underpay for my valuables. The funds wouldn’t sustain me for long, I reasoned, so why not instead pay the man to help me find a cure? Slayers terrified me, but the damage my dragon form had done to my hometown terrified me even more.
étienne yanked a moonmetal chain. A young girl, no more than thirteen, shuffled into view behind him, gagged and shackled at the wrists. Beneath a spike collar, blood slicked her throat. Terror swam in her eyes.
étienne laughed at the sky. “Diu smiles upon Florent today!”
Cheers rose. The girl fell face-first on the planks. The collar ripped her throat open. Steam poured out—the telltale signal of a dragon’s rapid healing magic. étienne caught my eye with a smug grin, as if I were one of his enamored fans.
I stepped back—and yelped. My bare foot had caught a nail. I bit my lip to suppress my tears and limped behind a cluster of barrels to hide the steam that rose from the puncture.
That chained girl could’ve been me.
“Smile.”
I spun toward the voice. A fashionable woman with bright hazel eyes and smooth age lines watched the scene unfold. Her fingers clenched around a closed parasol, but she smiled at the girl softly, as if to take her own advice. “No matter what they do to her, smile.”
“The people of Port-de-Chance will sleep soundly tonight,” étienne declared. “Upon the next Ignition, I will slay this dragon and return its fire to the stars!”
The mob roared.
The dragon girl looked around frantically, then caught my—no, the woman’s—gaze. She closed her eyes as if in pain, tears spilling freely, but stopped struggling. Behind her gag rose the tiniest hint of a smile.
Swallowing, the woman looked to me. “You will not find refuge with étienne,” she whispered. “I can help you, though.”
I took in her appearance more closely: silver ribbons that hid the streaks of age in her hair, silk gloves, neatly cobbled leather boots. She popped open the lacy parasol as the morning haze parted for the suns.
My legs shook, rooted to the dock. “Who are you?”
“My name is Anne-Sophie. You will call me sister.”
“ ‘Sister,’ ” I echoed. “Why?”
“What do you know about the Dames Blanches?”
I knew quite a bit. The Tale of Stars had a whole chapter based on their activities during the Dark Days.
They were a band of Immortal women wronged by men, whose rage grew so powerful, their ghosts now lingered under bridges to ambush men in perpetuity.
Ghosts weren’t real, of course, but the Church said the Dames Blanches demonstrated the fine line between justice and greed.
Unsolved crimes often sparked whispers of a criminal organization by the same name.
“Are you talking about the sisterhood of thieves?” I asked, swallowing.
“We are far more than that.”
“I’m an honest person.” I stepped backward. “I’m not a criminal.”
“Is it a crime to retake your life?” Anne-Sophie leaned closer. “Diu chose to make you a monster, but those people”—she cupped my face and made me watch the ecstatic faces of the dragon girl’s torturers—“those people chose their own fangs.”
Those people were normal citizens. Laborers. Parents. Churchgoers, even. People who made a diligent effort to counteract their greed with offerings to the Church of the War-Torn Gods.
Yet at this moment they were worse than greedy. They worshipped the power of chains, blood, and pain.
Like the Immortals during the Dark Days.
“ ‘Before he Ascended, Diu said,’ ” I recited from The Tale of Stars, “ ‘See death not as punishment, for too much time corrupts the mind. Purge your realm of crime, O mortal kind; then I shall return my fire to the stars.’ ”
Diu himself had promised to revoke the curse someday. All we had to do was prove we could stop hurting each other.
“Cling to the scripture, if it brings you peace.” She sighed. “But answer me this: Did The Tale of Stars ever protect you from unfair judgment?”
Tears filled my vision as I froze in Anne-Sophie’s grip.
“Don’t deny it. You see the truth as clearly as I do,” she pushed. “Diu tampers with the mortal realm like an unsatisfied artist, never happy with the finished product. He punishes us for the imperfections he helped instill in us.”
Blasphemy. Anne-Sophie spoke blasphemy. Diu went to war with his own brother to protect humans. To give us a chance to redeem ourselves from our misuse of magic with a mortal existence. He would curse her someday for insulting his sacrifice.
The Dames Blanches were the real criminals. The epitome of what Diu wanted to eradicate.
Yet here Anne-Sophie stood, free of scales.
“Please don’t hurt me,” I whispered.