Chapter 2

IT WAS DUSK by the time Atherton called a halt to the parade that had followed out of Saint Toby's to the place where Alys was to meet her judgment.

It was also raining.

But despite the dark and the churned-up mud, Alys could see clear evidence of the dragon. First of all it looked like dragon country: fertile farms scattered about, a large nearby lake, a series of peaks and plateaus separated by deep valleys and crevasses and thick woodlands that would confound pursuit by those forced to go on foot rather than by wing. Alys had heard it all in ballads, and although she had never seen a dragon, had never met anyone who had personally seen a dragon, had never heard of a dragon in these parts in her lifetime, she recognized the signs: the trampled farms closest to the foot of the mountain, the scorched trees, the deep grooves—no doubt left by dragon claws—in a rocky outcrop by the lake. The cart horses kept tossing their heads and making nervous huff sounds and showing the whites around their eyes, as though something that only they could see or hear or smell spooked them.

Her mind shied away from the thoughts that crowded her. She tried to regain the image of her and her father. She pictured their heads together, with sunlight streaming through the shop window as he patiently explained tin craft to her as thoroughly as if she'd been born a boy and could really be his apprentice.

I will not give them the satisfaction, Alys repeated over and over, so afraid she could hardly think. But the repetition had kept her back straight during the journey as she'd sat in the cramped cart, which smelled of stale turnips. It had helped her to focus beyond the gawking faces and the jabbing fingers. And if her teeth and bones felt all rattled loose from the ride, surely the people who had walked, slogging those last miles through mud, were hardly to be envied.

They dug a hole, deep to go beneath the shifting mud, then set up a rough-hewn pole, tamping down the dirt to hold it fast. Gower pulled her from the cart, using more force than was needed considering she didn't resist. They never untied her arms, but ran another rope through the bindings and then around the pole.

"Iron's surer," Gower complained.

"Fey creatures have an aversion to iron," Inquisitor Atherton said. "We don't want to frighten the dragon away." Then he stood before her and bellowed, "Do not, therefore, let sin rule your mortal body and make you obey its lusts. No more shall you offer your body to sin as a weapon of evil. Rather, offer yourself to God as one who has come back from the dead to life, and offer your body to God as a weapon for justice. Then sin will no longer have power over you."

It was bad enough they were going to kill her; she wasn't going to let him twist Scripture to fit her. She spat at him, remembering what they had said about Margaret's goat. The action lost some of its effectiveness since he was already soaked with the rain and she couldn't even tell if she had hit him.

But Atherton could afford to be magnanimous. "Repent," he told her, "and save your immortal soul."

She stared beyond his right shoulder, to a place in her mind where dust motes played in the sunlight and her father's big but gentle hands guided hers over a piece of tin that would eventually become a cup.

Atherton was willing to be magnanimous, but he wasn't willing to get wet for nothing. He instructed them to stick some of the flaming torches into the ground so that the dragon wouldn't have any trouble finding her. Then he sketched the sign of the cross in her general direction and turned his back on her.

The villagers followed him, returning down the slope lest the dragon come and make a meal of them all. She could hear the creak of the cart and a snatch or two of excited chatter, and then the rain swallowed up the sounds as thoroughly as the shadows had swallowed the people themselves. The torches sputtered and smoked in the dampness.

I should have left them with a nice curse, Alys thought. Something to keep them up nights, shivering in their beds. But Alys didn't know any curses, and anyway it was too late now.

She found a position where she could lean against the pole without any of the rough places sticking into her back.

At least she was alone, and for a while that was a comfort. But she could no longer form the picture of her father's workshop. Pieces of it kept slipping away, like shards of tin falling to the floor. And when she'd concentrate on those elusive parts, force them into being, other things would dissolve until eventually she couldn't even picture her father's face.

Then, with no one there as witness, she finally cried.

EVENTUALLY THE RAIN stopped. Clouds like tattered rags raced across the face of the almost-full moon. Alys was certain the rope around the pole was loose enough that she could slide down to rest her legs, but she wasn't sure she could get back up. The pole had been shaped so quickly, so roughly, that it was likely to snag the bindings, and that would be a terrible way to die: caught in a half-crouch, her bottom all muddy from sitting on the wet ground.

How would the dragon kill her? Perhaps she would be less afraid if she figured out just what to expect.

A blast of flame? Not likely, she decided. In the stories, dragons frequently asked for young maidens. If they simply incinerated their victims, why worry about age or gender or lack of ... Alys's stomach tightened. Despite what Inquisitor Atherton had shouted at her about sin and lust and Satan ruling her body, she was a maiden. In the village of Saint Toby's, there were girls who had been born the same year as she who were already married; two of them—Nola, whose father had gone to sea and never returned, and Aldercy, who was wed to Barlow's second-youngest son—already had babies. But Alys had never had much use for the village boys, who had all seemed coarse and pushy and who never dreamed of anything beyond Saint-Toby's-by-the-Mountain and one day running their own fathers' shops. Alys had always thought ... she'd thought...

What difference did it make what she had thought? Here she was tied to a pole as dragon's bait, and if the dragon ever got around to coming, it would kill her in some fashion that probably would not be with a blast of flame.

Which undoubtedly would have been the quickest.

In all likelihood it would eat her. The call for maidens could conceivably have something to do with the quality of taste. All she had to worry about was whether it would start to eat her right away, while she was still breathing and screaming and knowing what was going on, or kill her first, perhaps with a swift flick of those claws, which had cut through the stone by the lake, or maybe by biting off...

This wasn't helping. This was making things worse.

It would probably be fast, she tried to convince herself. I won't cry again. It wasn't enough that Gower and his horrid family and Atherton and all the rest couldn't see her, would never know: She wasn't going to cry again.

It would be fast. She'd seen the claw marks on the stone, the trees knocked out of the way of the creature's passing. It had a wingspan hundreds of feet across, and it was incredibly strong. It would be fast.

In the distance a wolf howled.

Alys shivered, a combination of the cold breeze through her rain-soaked clothes and the thought that a wolf wouldn't be fast.

The moon was no longer directly overhead. It wasn't exactly sinking below the horizon, but what if the dragon didn't come? What if she remained here for days, starving, fevered from the chill she was surely already catching? And what of wolves?

She twisted her arms and realized the rope that held her wrists was looser than she had anticipated. She tried to think back, to remember all the way to this afternoon and to who had tied her.

Perryn the wood-gatherer. Ah yes. Not that he was of a kinder disposition than the others, but he never could get anything right.

Alys folded her thumbs and little fingers in, trying to make her hands as narrow as possible. The twine rubbed painfully against her flesh as she tugged.

She yanked and nothing happened.

She pulled with steady pressure and felt the rope ease down over her right hand. Again she tugged.

This time her right hand came loose. She shook the tangle of knots off her left wrist, and that rope, still entwined with the rope that went around the pole, dropped in a heap to the mud at the foot of the pole.

Her arms felt as though they were going to fall off. The burning pinpricks of pain were so bad she almost wished they would. She flexed her fingers, her wrists, her shoulders—to get the blood moving again.

Now what?

She couldn't go back to Saint Toby's. They'd just bring her straight back here, and this time make sure she was tied securely. And even, she thought, even if they did take her escape as proof that she was innocent and forgave her, how could she ever forgive them, live with them, see them every day for the rest of her life knowing what they had thought, what they had caused to happen to her father, what they had wanted to do to her, what they still might do?

And she couldn't just go to a different village and try to make a new life. It wasn't like she was a boy with a trade, or even one who could be apprenticed. A very young girl child might be taken in on mercy, but she was too old by at least half.

Wrapping her sore arms around herself for warmth, Alys stooped down to ease her legs. She was no longer tied to the stake, but she had not really escaped for she had nowhere else to go.

That was when the dragon came.