Session 1: A Dragon at the Fair

Narrative Recap

At noon on the first day of the Midsummer Fair, a dragon the colour of old gold landed on the Wool Exchange, read the town a clause from a three-hundred-year-old lease, and asked for the rent. By nightfall Queen Hesper had four new Wardens and forty days.

The fair

The Midsummer Fair of Lease Year 300 opened late, on the green at Summerhythe in hot sun, because for the first time anyone could remember no Tally beacon came down the hills at dawn. The council opened the fair anyway. Beatrix Holloway was on the Keep’s north tower, where she had watched for the beacon, with the great crossbow and nothing to shoot. Kit Farrow was on the roof of the Wool Exchange watching the tumblers. Odda Quarrel was in the bell tower below him, checking the Great Tenor for cracks, and Iveth Ammerly was at a stationer’s stall on the green, haggling over the price of vellum.

The landing

At noon the fiddlers on the green stopped one by one. The sky over the Tally Cliffs went bright and then very large, a hot wind that reeked of brimstone came down the vale, and after it something with its wings half folded. Beatrix had it in her sights for three breaths and then saw the pennant in its claws, the Founder’s own marigold, in a pattern nobody had flown since her day. She did not shoot.

Orpiment landed on the Wool Exchange three yards from Kit’s boots, said “Good morning, tenant,” and read the opening of the lease aloud in a voice that carried to the Keep. The term was three hundred summers. The rent was due at the Lammas moon. Wystan Pye had a chest of crowns carried down from Coin Stair and offered it to her, and she declined it. Sir Ivo Latchford challenged her to single combat, and she declined that too. When Queen Hesper came down into the square and asked what the rent was, the dragon told her that a tenant who must be told the rent has not read the lease.

Shedlings at the ovens

As she settled, the dragon shook the dust of the flight off her scales. Two dozen shed flakes fell into the square, and the ones that landed near the bread ovens woke. Twelve shedlings went through the fair in two waves, looking for heat. The Wardens-to-be met them among the ovens: Beatrix with her shield, Kit down a drainpipe, Odda ringing the stall-bells to turn the crowd, Iveth putting out awnings as fast as they caught. Every shedling that broke went up in a burst of sparks. Mags Threlkeld lost her pie stall.

When it was over the dragon shed one more scale, the size of a cartwheel, and let it fall at Kit’s feet. “Keep that,” she said. “It is a receipt.”

Queen Hesper’s hall

That evening, in the hall of Marigold Keep, the Chancellor called Beatrix a coward for holding fire and demanded her spurs. Queen Hesper heard him out. Then she asked the four people who had been closest to the dragon what they had seen, listened to all of them, and named them Wardens of the Lease, with her own commission: find the lease, and learn the rent. Nobody at court could say where the Crown’s copy was.

What the Party Learned

• The rent is not gold. Orpiment declined the Chancellor’s chest of crowns and said she had not been asked for gold, nor asked for any.
• The rent falls due at the Lammas moon. Forty days from the first day of the fair.
• The Crown has lost its copy. Nobody in the Keep has seen the lease or knows where it is kept.

Where We Left Off

The Wardens slept at The Glad Kettle, where Mags gave them the long room over the brewhouse. Kit carried the dragon’s scale up to his stable loft and slept with an arm over it. In the morning they would start in the Keep’s muniment room.

The Party

• Beatrix Holloway (Hana), Paladin 3
• Iveth Ammerly (Theo), Wizard 3
• Kit Farrow (Mei), Rogue 3
• Odda Quarrel (Luis), Bard 3