Iron Binds

Interlude: the Sleeping Dragon

The Sleeping Dragon:

Chronicles of the Iron Hound as Recalled by Her Pathfinder, Corso Valiera

Part One

[A note has been pressed between the pages of this manuscript, stained and hastily scratched. It reads: "an old crone, but grey and bent. With turkey tails all up and down her unnatural long arms. Not much room for error, there. Was it planted? If so, by whom and why?"]

Unfortunately, I must begin the writing of this history with an apology, for when this affair began, the belief in its necessity was rare, and I was among the many great fools who insisted that small change was the responsible option. There is no one so blind to a society's flaws than one who benefits from them, after all, and I was the son of the Valiera, for all of my trauma and secrets.

I shall explain: the first time I ever laid eyes on Nezetta Ferro, the Huntress who would become the Iron Hound, she was eleven years old and fresh from the markets of Brix. The second time, she was splattered with the blackened blood and guts and fragmented bone of Bonaiuto Piombo.

There, I have already lied in my own history. I must have seen her in the interim, but either I was too young to care or too fixated on myself and my own ambitions. In any case, those were the two scenes I carried with me into my assignment as Pathfinder; they were all I knew of her firsthand.

That is my excuse for hoping that she would die in Apla. It is not a good excuse, in hindsight, but wisdom comes with age, and I was very young.

I shall turn back the clock a little and explain better: the five of us were assembled into something resembling a hunting crew roughly a week before the Apla deployment. I had been in the acquaintance of the Mentor, Fra Murata Avisti Eager, for several years prior, but the others were strangers to me. Sigismondo and Dianora Brixie, bastard twins from the capital, came with the personal recommendation of my brother Risto, a professor of chemistry at the University in Gherossa. The Medic had a much higher recommendation, from the Grandfather himself. This was utterly baffling to me at the time, but I was too much of a self-absorbed idiot to look into it right away.

Word of the King's death reached the Mentor and the twins the day before we boarded the Olunaria bound for Apla. I learned of it on the ship, because I am very good at rifling through other people's belongings without detection. I made it my business thereafter to get better acquainted with Dianora—not because I saw a path through her to the throne, mind you, but because I was not so much a fool as to overlook the value of her confidence. The bastard half-sister of a prospective Queen is likely to know things, you see.

So I brought her good wine and made friends. Or, rather, I tried to make friends; Dianora is cautious and prickly, and she cannot be faulted for it. I likely should have gone to Sigismondo, first—even less trusting, but more likely to give up information by accident—but I cannot regret all of my choices. That first bracing conversation with Dianora was the last enjoyment I was afforded before everything really went to hell.

The horse came back before she did. It was wild-eyed and covered in mud, but unharmed, and its reins had been tied to keep it from tangling them in its hooves. Still, despite the clear sign that the Huntress had sent the creature away to protect it, the villagers very nearly lost their minds with fear and doubt. Was the Huntress dead? Had the hag defeated her? They were all doomed, they decided; and of course, the accusations began shortly thereafter that we were all liars and hucksters. Some even speculated that the Huntress herself would be coming to kill their goats and their children shortly.

I write with some cheek now, though at the time, I was only slightly less panicked than the villagers about the prospect of Nezetta Ferro having gone feral. Remember that my impressions of her were thoroughly rooted in the memory of what she had done to Bonaiuto Piombo; I had seen her in her rage, and I was terrified of her. The Medic, Antare da Calloprea, was the only one to challenge me on this front. He thought me a fool for my fears; I thought him a fool for his confidence.