Dragon's Bait

Chapter 1 The day Alys was accused of being a witch started out like any other. She woke to the gray light of dawn and to the sound of her father coughing. Did he sound any better than he had the morning before? Yes, she told herself-just a little bit, but definitely better. And though she'd thought that every morning since late winter when he'd been so sick she'd been afraid he'd die, and though here it was with the wheat already harvested and the leaves beginning to turn, and he still too frail to run the tin shop by himself-that did nothing to lessen her conviction. He definitely sounded better. Of course, it wasn't normal for a girl to help in her father's business. A man without sons was expected to take in apprentices, not teach his trade to a fifteen-year-old daughter. But her father had had no need for an apprentice before he got sick, and now there was nothing extra with which to afford one. Without the goat cheese that Vleeter and his wife had given them and the bread that the widow Margaret had periodically left at their doorstep, they might well have starved during those long, long days when he'd been too sick to work at all. So now he was teaching her how to draw out tin into wire, how to pour it to fashion buttons, how to cut and join. She was slow, just learning, and he was slow, having to rest frequently. Between the two of them they could craft just barely enough tin to keep themselves alive. Until the day Alys was accused of being a witch. It started in the late afternoon, when a man she didn't know came into the shop. Saint-Toby's-by-the-Mountain was small enough that everybody knew everybody, so it wasn't often that she saw a stranger. She put down the shears with which she'd been cutting a sheet of tin and said, because her father had gone into the house to lie down, "Yes? May I help you?" It wasn't fair to judge someone by the way he looked, she knew, but there was something decidedly unpleasant about this man, about the way he didn't seem to fit together properly. The toothy smile didn't go with the cold eyes; the head, shaved in the manner of a man of the Church, didn't go with the long, elegant, beringed fingers; the clothes were much too fine for Saint Toby's-even for someone simply passing through Saint Toby's. "You are Alys, the tinsmith's daughter?" the man asked, though his gaze was roving all over the shop and he must see who she was even if-she could tell-he disapproved. Beyond him, she saw a flitter of movement by the door and recognized their neighbor, the wheelwright Gower. Now what was he doing? His shop had been closed all day, which was unusual, Gower being an ambitious man. He was so ambitious he had even made offers to buy their land so he could expand his own shop. His wife, Una, and their daughter, Etta, had refused to talk to Alys ever since her father had refused to sell. Leave it to Gower to show up at the first sign of trouble. "I'm Alys," she said. "I am Inquisitor Atherton of Griswold," the stranger said, naming the town on the other side of the mountain. Alys's attention leaped back from Gower, but before she could say anything, he continued, "You have been accused of witchcraft, and it is my duty to prove that." The already insincere smile broadened. "Or disprove it, if the evidence so warrants." "Witchcraft?" Alys had no idea what to say. "Who...I mean what...I mean..." "You will come with me," the Inquisitor told her. Alys knew she wasn't a witch and reasoned that she would therefore be proven innocent. Still, fear began to overcome confusion as Inquisitor Atherton took firm hold of her arm. Her voice shook. "But my father's aslee-" The Inquisitor's fingers dug into her arm as he repeated, "You will come with me." That was when she knew, deep in her heart-though she wouldn't admit it-that he would never find her innocent, no matter what. "Father!" she cried. The InquiVande Velde, Vivian is the author of 'Dragon's Bait' with ISBN 9780152166632 and ISBN 0152166637.