Morgan Rice - A feast of dragons

The metal staff went clanging on the stone, rolling across the corridor, as the man jumped on top of Steffen and pinned him down. He reached over, grabbed Gwen’s blade off the floor, raised it high, and in one quick motion, brought it down for Steffen’s throat.

“Meet your maker, you deformed waste of creation,” the man snarled.

But as he brought his blade down, there came a horrible groan-and it was not from Steffen. It was from Gareth’s dog.

Gwen stood there, hands trembling, hardly believing what she had just done. She hadn’t even thought about it, she had just done it-and she looked down as if she were outside of herself. When the iron staff had landed on the floor, she had grabbed it and hit Gareth’s dog in the side of the head. She hit him so hard, right before he stabbed Steffen, that she sent him onto the floor, limp. It was a fatal blow, a perfect blow.

He lay there, blood pouring from his head, and his eyes were frozen. Dead.

Gwen looked down at the iron staff in her hands, so heavy, the iron cold, and suddenly dropped it. It hit the stone with a clang. She felt like crying. Steffen had saved her life. And she had saved his.

“My lady?” came a voice.

She looked up and saw Steffen standing there, beside her, looking at her with concern.

“It was my aim to save your life,” he said. “But you have saved mine. I owe you a great debt.”

He half bowed in acknowledgment.

“I owe you my life,” she said. “If it weren’t for you, I would be dead. What are you doing here?”

Steffen looked at the ground, then back up at her. This time, he did not avoid her gaze. This time he looked right at her. He was no longer shifting, no longer evasive. He seemed like a different person.

“I sought you out to apologize,” he said. “I was lying to you. And your brother. I came to tell you the truth. About your father. I was told you were up this way, and I came here looking for you. I stumbled across your encounter with this man. I’m fortunate that I did.”

Gwen looked at Steffen with a whole new sense of gratitude and admiration. She also felt a burning curiosity to know.

She was about to ask him, but this time Steffen needed no prodding.

“A blade did indeed fall down the chute that night,” he said. “A dagger. I found it, and took it for myself. I hid it. I don’t know why. But I thought it unusual. And valuable. It is not every day something like that falls down. It was thrown into the waste, so I saw no harm in keeping it for myself.”

He cleared his throat.

“But as fate would have it, my master beat me that night. He beat me every night, from the time I began working there, for thirty years. He was a cruel, horrific man. I accepted it every night. But that night, I’d had enough. Do you see these lashes on my back?”

He turned and lifted his shirt, and Gwen flinched at the sight: he was covered in lacerations.

Steffen turned back.

“I had reached my limit. And that dagger, it was in my hands. Without thinking, I took my revenge. I defended myself.”

He pleaded with her.

“My lady, I am not a murderer. You must believe me.”

Her heart went out to him.

“I do believe you,” she said, reaching out and clasping his hands.

He looked up, eyes welling with tears of gratitude.

“You do?” he asked, like a little boy.

She nodded back.

“I did not tell you,” he added, “because I feared you would have me imprisoned for the death of my master. But you have to understand, it was self-defense. And you promised once that if I told you I would not go to jail.”

“And I still do,” Gwen said, meaning it. “You shall not go to jail. But you must help me find the owner of that dagger. I need to put my father’s killer away.”

Steffen reached into his waist, and pulled out an object wrapped in a rag. He reached out and handed it to her, placing it in her palm.

Slowly, she pulled it back, revealing the weapon he had found. As Gwen felt the weight of it in her palm, her heart pounded. She felt a chill. She was holding her father’s murder weapon. She wanted to throw it away, get as far away from it as she could.

But at the same time, she was transfixed. She saw the stains on it, saw the hilt. She gingerly turned it over every which way.

“I see no markings on it, my lady,” Steffen said. “Nothing that would indicate its owner.”

But Gwen had been raised around royal weapons her entire life, and Steffen had not. She knew where to look, and what to look for. She turned it upside down, and looked at the bottom of the hilt. Just in case, just in some off-chance it belonged to a member of the royal family.

As she did, her heart stopped. There were the initials: GAN.

Gareth Andrew MacGil.

It was her brother’s knife.

Gwen walked beside Godfrey, her mind reeling from her encounter with Gareth’s dog, with Steffen. She could still feel the scrapes on her knees and elbows, and felt traumatized as she thought how close she had come to dying. She also felt traumatized to think that she had just killed a man. Her hands still shook, as she relived her swinging that iron staff again and again.

Yet at the same time, she also felt profoundly grateful to be alive, and profoundly grateful to Steffen for saving her life. She had badly underestimated him, underestimated what a good person he was, regardless of his appearance, his role in his master’s murder, which was clearly deserved and self-defense. She was ashamed at herself for judging him based on his appearance. He had found in her a friend for life. When all this was over, she was determined to not let him wallow away in the basement anymore. She was determined to pay him back, to make his life better somehow. He was a tragic character. She would find a way to help him.

Godfrey looked more concerned than ever as the two of them marched down the castle corridors; he had been aghast as she’d recounted to him the story of her near assassination, of Steffen’s rescue-and of Steffen’s revelation of the dagger. She had brought it to him and Godfrey had examined it, too, and had confirmed it was Gareth’s.

Now that they had the murder weapon, the two of them knew instantly what they needed to do: before going to the council with this, they had to get the witness they needed. Godfrey had recalled Firth’s involvement, his walking with Gareth on that forest trail, and he figured they needed to corner Firth in first, get him to confess-then, with the murder weapon and a witness, they could bring this to the council and bring down their brother for good. Gwen had agreed, and the two of them had set off to find Firth in the stables, and had been marching ever since.

As they went, Gwen still held the dagger in her hands, the weapon that had murdered her father, still stained with his blood, and she felt like crying. She missed her father terribly, and it pained her beyond words to think that he had died this way, that this weapon had been thrust into him.

But her emotions swung from sadness to rage, as she realized Gareth’s role in all of this. This had confirmed her worst suspicions. A part of her had clung to the idea that maybe, after all, Gareth was not as bad as all of this, that maybe he was redeemable. But after this latest attempt on her life, and seeing this murder weapon, she knew that was not the case-he was hopeless. Pure evil. And he was her brother. How did that affect her? After all, she carried his same blood. Did that mean that evil lurked somewhere inside her, too? Could a brother and a sister be so different?

“I still can’t conceive that Gareth would do all of this,” she said to Godfrey as they walked quickly, side-by-side, twisting their way through the corridors of the castle, heading towards the distant stables.