Chapter 29 Belle-Belle
Belle-Belle
The villagers had seen us off with cheers of “Our knight!” Which was heartening, to know that they were shouting for me…
but also not for me. Would they have as enthusiastically chanted “Our lady knight” or “Our lady chevalier?” I did not think so, as much as these people did not seem to hew strongly to tradition.
I was proud that I had kept my nerves in check, but soon I would feel dwarfed by the enormity of the city we approached.
As Comrade led the way, we crested a small slope, and saw a wide plain before us.
There, in the center, a city rose to prominence: Laons, the capital since Matapa had driven King Aristide from his ancestral home.
Whether the city had been built atop a natural hill of that size, or atop a larger mound that had been scraped away by human hands, I knew not; but I saw that it was clearly defensible due to its height, and thus an excellent choice for the monarchy in retreat.
It was the largest city I had ever seen, and I tensed my jaw as a reminder not to gape like some backwater noble. Which I was…but nobody else needed to know that.
Buildings with spirals in the older style drew the eye upward; I guessed there must be a quarry nearby, to construct so much magnificence in stone.
The city appeared large enough to contain all the necessary things inside: markets and houses, districts for artisans and merchants and scholars, and barracks, of course.
An old holy place or two might still stand, and I suspected at least one of the taller buildings had originated as such, but most such buildings had been repurposed as places to meditate upon the celestial powers.
I tried to spy which of the tallest buildings might be the palace, and my heart pounded against my chest at the thought of finally embracing King Aristide with my vision, touching him to swear fealty.
Would his hand be warm as I kissed it? Or cool, tempered by the presence of rings?
A momentary jostle in the saddle ripped me from my yearning, and I went back to analyzing the situation as any good courtier would.
At the base of the city, the town had expanded, and was in fact still expanding.
I did not need Guillaume’s enhanced vision to see that construction was ongoing.
Some buildings appeared half-finished, as though the supply could not quite keep up with the influx of citizens flocking to King Aristide to comply with his request for aid.
Certain buildings, I could see as we drew nearer, were in fact pavilions, mighty tents that provided enough shelter for now.
It was to this outer city that Comrade led us, and I wondered why he was insisting so strongly that we find the next member of our company now, instead of letting us happen upon him as we had in the past. It took some time to cross the plain, and in the background, I registered Matteo happily chatting with Kai, telling him about our mission and our assembled oddities, though mercifully he left out my true sex.
That would be one more issue to address before we entered the city proper, and made the king’s acquaintance. It was unclear whether the oath of loyalty would keep my men from letting out my secret, or only keep from acting in such a way that explicitly circumvented my orders.
But in the outlying town, I saw Comrade’s haste made clear, and the strategy we had to adopt crystallized in my mind.
I had not doubted Benoit when he had told me of the hostility he faced when his faerie-gifted strength prompted fierce rejection from his own people.
Seeing it was another thing entirely.
There was no town square in the outlying town, but clearly there were open spaces for merchants to set up, for trade to be conducted. And it was into one of these open spaces that Comrade walked, where we beheld a man seated amidst towering piles…
…of bread?
Yes: a man with raven-colored hair in braids was seated on a wooden stool that mimicked his acorn-brown skin, the coloration of one who was from so far north that humans had gone pale and back to brown again. Around him were teetering towers of rolls, Reggian ones if I did not miss my mark.
The man was methodically stuffing rolls into his mouth, barely pausing to chew. In fact, he seemed quite content.
It was the onlookers who were not: bakers in flour-spotted smocks, and a few who seemed to be merchants by their richer dress. The crowd was not violent…yet. But I had seen that combination of hunger and entitlement before, and the reason for our haste became clear to me.
Still, I paused. “This is the one?” I whispered to Comrade.
“The only man still wanting from our company, yes,” Comrade was able to reply, as we were not yet in earshot of the small crowd.
“Good afternoon, gentle sirs,” I said as we continued forward, pitching my voice to be heard. “I see that there is bread aplenty here, and I have coin to buy more, should anyone be displeased with the quantity set out here being allocated to—and what is your name, my fellow?”
A few dozen more rolls had vanished into his mouth in the intervening moments.
He looked up at me, and his amber eyes flashed with something that made me recoil. I could not name it, having never seen it before, but his eyes burned as though with a fever.
“They call me Glutton here, but in my homeland, Gunnar.” His voice was slightly accented, again bringing to mind what I had heard of the people inhabiting the farthest northern lands of ice and snow.
As he was seated, I could not guess at his exact height, but he was solidly built, like a bear that kept some heft about its middle to make surviving the winter easier: yet only a fool would mistake the bear’s girth for a sign that it was too slow to be a threat.
“And are you determined to eat all that bread to break your midday fast?” I strove to keep my voice civil, as though this were the sort of conversation I held daily.
He laughed, spraying crumbs. “Yes, I would eat all this and more, if only the bakers here were not so lazy. But what I eat is nothing to what three were eaten first.”
His yellowish eyes turned to Guillaume, their amber hues dancing.
“His purpose was eaten.” I did not need to look at Guillaume to know that he probably looked more dour than usual and was a moment away from pulling a blade.
Then the man gazed at the city looming over us, its spires reaching towards the sun. “The purpose of that holy place was eaten.”
His burning eyes settled on Matteo.
“And his fate was eaten.”
For once, Matteo had no words.
Then the man—Glutton—went back to devouring bread, shrinking the pile of rolls that had once penned him in. If Comrade advised me to take in this man, I had no choice, unsavory as he seemed.
I tossed a bag of faerie gold to Benoit, since I had taken to traveling with some in a pouch, so that I did not have to summon the faerie trunk each time I wished to make a payment.
“Please pay the bakers for all this and more.”
I turned Comrade in a circle around Glutton and his rolls, forcing the onlookers to step back a few paces, hoping it would keep our conversation a bit more private. That, and the gold Benoit was handing out seemed an excellent distraction.
“Do you always eat this much?” I inquired, trying to suppress a shudder at the unnatural way this man inhaled food.
“Nay, only from time to time. I will not cause a famine, for I have seen it, and it is ugly.” For a brief moment, the man paused with food at his lips.
Then he shook himself, like a dog shaking a chill from its coat.
“I eat like this from time to time, though, to pass the hours. Life here passes slowly, forever at the pace of a long winter.”
“If you are insufficiently committed, would you join my company? I will pay you handsomely, and keep you well-fed and in good cheer.”
As I spoke, the piles of rolls had dwindled, and Glutton was finishing the last few dozen. At last, he stood, dusting crumbs off his dark, tattered clothes. He was almost as tall as Benoit, overall well-proportioned with muscle and a thick middle.
“All three things were eaten, except this path,” he muttered. Then he looked up at me, and I was able to put a name to what had disturbed me earlier: his eyes held a flicker of madness. Sometimes the faeries played with humans too fiercely, and we snapped.
“Yes,” he replied, after looking me and Comrade up and down.
“And do you swear yourself to me, to follow my orders, most especially any oath I ask you to swear on my horse Comrade?”
“Yes,” he said again, not seeming bothered by taking on an oath, something that could cut both ways.
“Then we shall find an inn to call our home,” I proclaimed, wishing I felt as confident as I was trying to sound, and trusting that Comrade would know to guide us to a place that was ideal for our unwieldy number of faerie-gifted men.
This encounter had been one more unpleasant reminder that not all the human world saw faerie gifts as benevolent.
And it was better here than other places, surely, with no laws passed against consorting with faeries or bearing their charms, though I had heard dark rumors from the south where Matapa’s rule had taken root.
Our strangeness would be one more obstacle, surely, and all I could hope was that Comrade’s advice, and our passel of oddities, would prevail.