Free Chronicles of the Dragon Pirate by David Talon

shelled next. Hiyap!” He put his heels to the horse’s flanks and took off down the street as the guards raised their pikes to let me in.
    The front of the shoppe was ablaze with light from the pair of dragon-globes the guardsmen must’ve brought and set on the back shelf, and I gasped as I looked at the table. Gran-Pere was lying face down on the wooden tabletop with a wood axe driven deep into his back. Blood had flowed out and onto the floor of packed earth, which had absorbed what it could before the rest congealed into a coppery smelling pool. Flies buzzed as they sought out the choicest morsels. One of the guards had stepped inside behind me, and as I looked at him in horror he gave a sympathetic shrug. “Governor gave orders not to move the body until he’s had a chance to look at it.”
    “But who would do such a thing?”
    From across the room a familiar woman’s voice answered. “It was Seth,” and I recognized her as Mistress Margaret as I turned to look. She was sitting beside the hearth with Belle-M’ere, holding a cup to my foster-mother’s lips. The look Mistress Margaret gave me was grim. “He wanted revenge on you.”
    “Is that Tomas?” I heard Belle-M’ere say as she turned towards me and the knot of fear wrapped itself around my throat like a hangman’s noose as Mistress Margaret put the fired-clay cup down. Belle-M’ere was untouched; she had no bloodstains, no marks of violence, but she was just as dead as Gran-Pere. Her lips were black as the depths of the sea, as were her eyes.
    I ran to her, almost knocking us both into the fire crackling in the hearth, and we wrapped our arms around each other as we cried, Belle-M’ere’s tears leaving black trails on her face. Mistress Margaret spoke quietly in my ear. “Is there truly no hope?”
    My head still resting on her shoulder, I shook my head no. “The fruit of the Goblinsbane stops pain like its root does, but it also causes numbness. Goblinsbane seed makes the body go so numb the heart soon stops beating... and there’s no way to stop it.”
    “Seth came into the shoppe after you left,” Belle-M’ere said as I pulled back to look at her. “He claimed to be on an errand for Master Gomez, and while he was here he asked papa if there were poisons that mimicked swamp-water fever, where you watch the person slip away without being able to do anything about it. Papa didn’t think about who was asking, but told him, showing Seth the seed I’d been saving for next spring’s planting. It was only when Seth snatched it out of his hands that papa realized anything was amiss. He yelled for the guard, and that is when Seth...”
    She broke down in tears and I held her against my chest, blackness staining my shirt as Mistress Margaret said sharply, “Why did you say nothing when Seth began asking questions?”
    Belle-M’ere pulled back and dried her eyes with the black stained edge of her linen apron. “He was cordial to me for the first time ever, and I hoped he had finally gotten over the death of the immoral woman he’d...he had been living with. But his grief has turned to evil.” Belle-M’ere looked at me, her expression the determined one I was used to. “Tomas, listen to me. If dragon-spirits could transmute poison, I know I would be saved, no matter how much strength Smoke needed.” I nodded unhappily, and she took my face in her hands. “Bright-eye tea is keeping the goblinsbane at bay for the moment, but it will not last. I have perhaps two hours, three at the most, but you must be gone long before the last hour approaches.”
    “Belle-M’ere, I can’t just leave you...”
    She shook me. “You can and you must. After he forced the seed down my throat and made me swallow, he told me of Draco Dominus’s plans for you, which he overheard Lord Marcus discuss with Master Gomez. This was his last chance for revenge.”
    Anger blazed like a torch in my heart. “I’ll kill him, I swear it!”
    “No! Tomas, listen to me: