Cora picked up a brown leaf from her bowl. It dripped butter. Herbed, salted, peppered. Rotten.
The other plate was better. Orange sweet potatoes. Terndowns grew in greenhouses. Ariland traded with the south. Kaldenval lived on cabbage and sweet potatoes in winter. The potatoes were swimming in the same pungent butter. She shook it off a slice.
Nothing too filling, but something to keep me sharp.
The weeks of starvation sapped her strength. More importantly, it fogged her mind. Cora wrote sometimes, lists of her food. The state of the produce. Gavin came in every day to read it.
Every day so far, he told her that the dragon was not ready to see her.
He is so skittish about this Ormand.
Cora had met him before. Her mother brought her to audiences with the old king. Before she was warded to Ariland. Ormand had been a boy a few years older than Cora.
It must have been eight years ago; I was nine. The king never brought him to Terndowns.
It was easy to see why the boy did not travel with his father. She remembered him as round-faced and reluctant to move. Always had his hands on something more interesting than what anyone else was saying. Cora had never seen the fascination with toys. Her mother had always asked what she wanted, and Cora requested books instead of dolls.
She looked over to the bookshelf. It was mostly fiction. Books on science, artillery, engineering would be suspicious. She would only ask for those if she had the means to put it to use. The contents of this shelf earned its utility every conversation she had.
She heard counting. Cora put the plates on the desk.
The key clicked in the lock. She watched Gavin open the door. He stepped in and asked, “Are you sure you want to meet with him?”
Do I want to crawl in the Dragon’s mouth?
“Yes.” Cora stood.
Gavin passed the baton from hand to hand. He did not count this tic, but Cora did.
“He is unwell in his mind. He has become quite strange.”
Let’s all search for someone strange in this castle.
He waited for her to say something, then he continued. “I don’t know what I can say to prepare you. Let’s go.”
Gavin counted under his breath as they descended the stairs. Only barely audible, Cora had to strain to hear it. Cora was surprised to find themselves, when they walked down the stairs, alone. She looked at her unbound wrists, back up the empty stairs.
Trust… Is it earned or is it desperation?
There were guards at the bottom. They wore the heavy black plate, and tall vulture plumes on their helmets. They looked away from Gavin as he approached them. In his wake, the scent of mint and a dying tooth wafted over her.
The stone walls stood bare. None of the previous ruler’s ornamentation. Nothing replaced the beautiful banners and paintings she remembered.
Gavin’s pace slowed as they rounded a turn and through a doorway. The entry hall opened around her and the door to the city were sealed. The heavy oak cross bolt had grown a coat of dust. Mortar shoved through the jam blocked the light.
Nothing more than a passageway now.
The soldiers here looked browbeaten. Tired. They stood in rows of constant attention staring at the sealed door. Their gaze had long since passed from alertness to hypnotic detachment. As Gavin passed, she saw them flinch and try to hide their revulsion.
He unlocked an iron grate and led her down a staircase. The row of torches blackened the ceiling. She held back a cough. The doors they passed smelled of food and dust.
A wooden door at the bottom opened onto another iron grate. Cora smelled drying mortar and she put a hand to the masonry. She could feel the damp emanating from it.
They dug a tunnel in the back of a cupboard?
No torches hung on these walls and Gavin pulled out his tinker’s light jar. He turned and told her, “Cora, it’s not too late to turn back.”
She arched an eyebrow and said, “Please continue.”
Another grate, another key. This one opened into a wide hall full of soldiers. These ones were not dressed in black. Their plate armor was festooned with bright colors, illuminated by rows of glowing jars. Each soldier bore paintings on every piece, no two the same.
She looked up and saw a row of bells with their ringers bound by lines that led through the wall beyond. Each one labeled. She read, ‘Food’, ‘Drink’, ‘Panic’, ‘Cleaner’ before being led forward.
Gavin sat on a wooden chair. There was no door that she could see in the wall below the bells. He started pulling off his clothes.