One Good Knight by Mercedes Lackey Page B

nodded. “Inland and north of here. It’s farther than we usually trade, but I’ve seen it on the maps. Messengers will be dispatched immediately, Majesty.”
    â€œBut until the Champion can be found?” Solon asked, persistently, turning his penetrating gaze on Andie while her nerves stretched thin. “Is there a remedy to keep this monster from ravaging the countryside? As the Queen has said, if we cannot keep it in check, we will starve before help can come.”
    Andie felt sweat trickling down the back of herneck. “Well, yes,” she admitted reluctantly. “The Tradition is very—very strong on this point. There is one way to keep it from raging everywhere. But—but it’s not very nice—”
    â€œMy dear child!” one of the other advisers exclaimed. “What is going on now is a great deal worse than ‘not very nice’! Come, what it is?”
    She bowed her head over her notes. “You have to give it an offering. Mostly The Tradition says that it has to be once a week, although some records say it has to be more often. Once a week is probably right.” She felt the words forced out of her against her will. “But it has to be a very—very special sort of offering, in order to make the thing work. It has to be something that’s a real—sacrifice.” Finally the last of it came out in a rush. “You have to offer it a virgin to eat. A girl. A live girl, once a week, left tied to a stake where it can easily find her.”
    Her words fell into the silence like leaden pellets.
    Then, everyone began talking at once.
    Andie remained numb, listening to them. She could hardly believe what she was hearing. Not one of them asked if there was some other way of dealing with this dragon. Not one suggested a different approach. They simply, and without argument, and with no hesitation at all, accepted this preposterous idea, and began putting forward ways of implementing it, immediately.
    â€œSlaves—” said Lord Hira, who was something of a slave trader. “We can bring in slave girls to feed it. I can have my factors contact the slave fleet—”
    â€œI believe that the sacrifice was specifically to be a virgin, Lord Hira,” Solon said dryly. Papers rustled in his hand as he looked over the copy of the notes Andie had made for him. “Yes. A virgin, and nubile, not a little girl. So trying to get around the stipulation by using a child won’t work—and when have you ever brought in a nubile virgin, eh?”
    Lord Hira mumbled something, but he knew, as Andie knew (though she wasn’t to say so, as she wasn’t supposed to be aware of such things) that Acadia was the end of the corridor of the slave trade. Technically in fact, the slave trade was illegal in Acadia; any slave purchased was supposed to be freed immediately, and allowed to work off the price of his or her freedom from the master. In practice, this was impossible; a master would set the value of the slave so high, and wages so low, that it would take a miracle to work the sum off. Only someone like Cassiopeia, who chose to buy her slaves’ loyalty with their freedom, would actually follow the spirit as well as the letter of the law.
    But because of this, it was unlikely that Lord Hira would be able to purchase a dozen virgins or even one virgin at short notice, at this end of the trading corridor. Virginity had a very high value, and a correspondingly high price tag attached to it in the southern kingdoms across the Lesser Sea, and by the time a girl arrived here, that price would certainly have been met long ago.
    â€œWe should ask for volunteers!” said Lord Cheon insistently. “For the good of the country!”
    â€œYou don’t really believe that any girl is going to offer herself to be eaten by a dragon, do you?” Lord Hira sneered. “At least, not a sane one! I suppose we might get some poor wet fish