Beast Trials: The Last True Tamer novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Bare Girl
Anwen stops a loose wyrm with her bare hands and signs the Roll in front of the realm; every caged beast kneels and Lord Aldric sees her bell.
The marsh-wyrm broke its cage on the morning of registration, and a nine-year-old boy was standing right in front of it.
I was sweeping the Pens at Brannock Gate, two coppers a day, when I heard the iron bar snap.
Every noble in the yard turned toward the sound.
Nobody moved.
The wyrm was the length of a hay cart, green-black, with a jaw that could take a calf in one bite.
It slid out of the broken cage with its belly low and its throat swelling.
The boy had dropped his water pail and stood frozen with his mouth open.
Lord Aldric's son Cassian was ten paces away with a riding crop in his hand.
He was the one who had cracked it against the bars to show off for the ladies.
He didn't run toward the boy.
He ran away, and his golden hair bounced when he did it.
"Somebody kill it!" he shouted.
The Watch soldiers lifted their spears, but they were too far off.
I dropped my broom.
I'm not brave.
I'm only a girl who has lived her whole life around animals, and I know the sound a beast makes right before it kills.
This one wasn't making it.
This one was scared.
I walked out into the open yard with my hands empty and my apron still tied on.
"Hey," I said quietly. "Hey, big girl. Look at me."
The wyrm's head swung around.
Its yellow eye found me, and the whole yard went silent.
"I know," I said. "They hurt you. They've kept you in that box for a month."
I rang the little brass bell on my neck cord once, soft, the way I always do when I'm nervous.
The bell is the only thing I have from my mother.
The wyrm let out a long breath through its nose.
Then it lowered its huge head to the dirt at my feet, and it lay down.
I put my palm flat between its eyes.
It was warm, and it was shaking.
The boy ran to his mother, and she grabbed him and cried.
Nobody clapped.
Cassian Thornwick came walking back across the yard with his chin up and his face red.
"Seize her," he said.
The soldiers looked at one another.
"My lord?"
"She is bare," Cassian said. "She has no bonded beast, and she laid hands on a Trial animal."
"Do you know what the law says about that? Twenty lashes in the yard."
He looked around at the nobles.
He needed them to nod, and a few of them did.
I took my hand off the wyrm's head and stood up.
My knees were shaking, but I kept my voice flat.
"It was going to kill the boy."
"It was going to be put down," Cassian said, "by people who are allowed to touch it. Take her."
Two soldiers took my arms.
They didn't squeeze hard, but they didn't let go either.
"Stop."
The voice came from behind the crowd, low and dry.
A tall man in a black Watch coat walked through the nobles, and they stepped aside for him without being asked.
He had black hair, a pale scar through his left eyebrow, and the badge of a commander on his collar.
I knew his name.
Everyone in Eldmark knew it.
Kieran Falkirk, Commander of the Trial Watch.
"Read the law properly, Lord Cassian," he said.
He didn't raise his voice.
"A bare who touches a Trial beast inside the Arena yard is not lashed. She is entered on the Roll."
Cassian laughed.
"She's a stable girl."
"Trial law doesn't ask what she is."
Kieran's dark eyes moved to me and stayed there.
"She can sign or she can walk out the gate. If she walks, the lashing stands."
The soldiers let go of my arms.
I looked at the Roll book lying open on the registration table.
Thirty names. All of them nobles, or the sons and daughters of rich farmers, every one with a beast already bonded.
The Beast Trials kill two or three entrants every time they run.
I thought of the old stable-master who raised me, who died two winters ago owing money to this house.
I thought of twenty lashes.
"Does it come with a bed?" I asked.
Someone in the crowd laughed, and Kieran's mouth moved very slightly.
"Barracks. Meals. A place to sleep that isn't a stall."
I walked to the table and picked up the quill.
My hand was steady now, and that surprised me.
I wrote ANWEN ASHDOWN under the thirtieth name, and I pressed so hard the nib tore the page.
"Anwen Ashdown," Cassian said. "A stable girl and a stable-master's pet. You'll be dead by the first night."
"Then you won't have to look at me for long," I said.
That was when the yard began to move.
The caged beasts along the wall had been quiet all morning.
Now a Hollow wolf in the nearest pen stood up, walked to the bars, and lowered its head.
The night-stag next to it folded its front legs.
One by one, down the whole row of cages, every beast in the yard knelt toward me.
The nobles stopped talking.
At the top of the steps stood Lord Aldric Thornwick, silver-haired, in a velvet coat.
He wasn't looking at the beasts.
He was looking at my throat, at the small brass bell on its cord.
And for the first time that I had ever seen, he looked afraid.
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