Sonata Form

by Carole Cummings

  “Well, yes, but Aleks has been doing it since he was wee, apparently, so they’ll likely do it together.” Howell noted Ellis’s bemusement. He shrugged and turned onto the high street. “Colorat wasn’t a wealthy country before all the trouble, and once it started…” His mouth crimped. “From what I can gather from Aleks, it was only him and his tad on the preserve, and his tad was crippled up and dying of the waste. Aleks ran everything, including the forge, until they were both arrested.” He stopped, ruminating with a bewildered frown. After a moment, he went on, “They brought in dragonkin from Taraverde, Aleks said. Dragonkin. Willing, or at least he thought so. Took over the preserve, and started feeding them what that nesh minger Cennydd—” It was bitten off through clenched teeth, like every other time that name came up. Howell shook his head, lips pressed tight and eyes on the road. “Dragonkin hurting dragons. Never thought I’d see such a thing.”

  “There are a lot of things I never thought I’d see.” Ellis was still trying to figure out which one to allow space in his head. War, and enemy planes off the coast of Tirryderch, and now bombs in Tirryderch.

  Alton had been right—they were going after the part of Preidyn that would cripple the rest. And with Tirryderch reluctant to risk its magical folk…

  Ellis shifted uncomfortably in his seat and decided the first thing he needed to do when he got back to Wellech was to establish a safe way to communicate with Dilys. She certainly wouldn’t be dithering over whether to allow volunteers to risk themselves. Ellis had already got a few reports from Tirryderch’s First Warden with barely disguised whinging in the margins about his newest novice Warden, and She says she knows you—can’t you tell her I don’t need her help running things? Ellis had no doubt Dilys would only laugh at him if he tried, and anyway, she probably could run things, and quite well. In fact, with what had happened in Tirryderch only an hour or so ago, Ellis had no doubt Dilys was right in the thick of it, containing the fallout and hunting down whoever was responsible.

  “His tad didn’t last a month.”

  Howell’s low tone jolted Ellis out of his musing. He glanced over to see Howell’s knuckles were white on the steering wheel.

  “He’s younger than Milo,” Howell went on. “Aleks, I mean. He’s only a boy, still.” His lips were pursed and his brow was furrowed. “He doesn’t say, but I’m thinking there were a lot of things he had to do to get out of there that no boy should even have to think about.”

  Ellis looked down into his lap then out the window. “War doesn’t care.”

  “It doesn’t.” Howell was quiet as he took the turn onto Queensway Road, but it was an uncomfortable quiet. So Ellis wasn’t surprised when Howell cleared his throat and said, “I don’t like that he went. Milo, I mean. I don’t like that he went and I don’t like how he did it. But I respect his reasons, and I respect him for living his convictions.”

  Ellis kept staring out the window. “I can do all that and still be angry with him.”

  “You can.”

  “And worried.”

  “Of course.”

  “And bloody terrified that he’s going to—”

  “Fy machgen i,” Howell cut in, the endearment gentle, and unexpected enough to stop Ellis before he got going, “listen to an old man who knows, who’s lived it from both sides—worry and fear will get you nothing but a dizzy head and a sore heart. And when it comes to Priddys, it always ends up wasted effort anyway.” His expression turned soft. “If you’d ever seen my Ceri in action, you’d never doubt it.”

  “You… wait.” Ellis blinked over at him, thoroughly diverted. “Did you… did you serve with her?”

  He hadn’t actually known Howell had served at all.

  “And you have seen Milo in action,” Howell continued, ignoring the question entirely. He was smiling now, for all the world a proud tad bigging up his son. “How many mages, d’you think, could hold off a witch, a sorcerer, and a raging dragon, all at once, and live to tell it?”

  “He almost didn’t live. That’s the bloody point.”

  “Except it’s not.” Howell shook his head, smoothly rounding a curve in the road then wincing when a tire hit a rut. “The point is that a young man, untried and not expecting trouble, was taken off his guard and attacked out of the blue, in the middle of the night, by what should have been overpowering force—what would’ve been overpowering force for anyone else—and still managed to save his dragons while protecting his cariad and his home and my daughter.

  “The point, boyo, is that there was no way in any nether all of that wasn’t going to get out, one way or another, and once it did, that exemption Ceri arranged wasn’t going to hold. Milo’s time as a civilian was up the second he found Cennydd with that calf, and the cleverest thing he could’ve done was exactly what he did—going to Alton instead of waiting for the Royal Services recruiter to come get him. Because you don’t want to know what Ceri saw in the Green Coast War before she fell beneath Alton’s eye, what they expect of their magical folk on the frontlines, and that’s the way it was all heading for Milo until the moment he asked me to drive him to the Home Guard’s offices.”

  Ellis narrowed his eyes. “You drove him.” There was betrayal in his tone, he knew there was, but he couldn’t help it. Even if he knew Howell was right, that it all made sense, he still couldn’t help it.

  Howell sighed. “Ellis. Lad.” He scrubbed at his short brown hair. “Say what you want about Ceri Priddy, think what you want, but you can’t say she doesn’t love her son fiercely. Which is why you can’t pretend not to see that she’s spent her life since he was born making him ready for exactly what he’s just stepped into.”

  “That’s…” Ellis stared, confounded, because what? What? “Actually, that’s the biggest load of shite I think I’ve ever heard. From what Milo tells me, and from the little I’ve seen myself, Ceri did everything short of building barricades to make sure Milo never saw the other side of Old Forge’s fences.”

  “Right. Of course.” Howell smirked. Smirked. “Which is why she had her mam teach him control and your mam teach him magic. Which is why she sent him to the best, most prestigious and well-known school for Dewin outside Eretia. Which is why she made a proud announcement for his rites and threw him a very public party.”

  Ellis couldn’t say Which is why she pounded it into him since he was wee that he had to hide the Seeing because he couldn’t tell if Howell knew about it, and it wasn’t…

  Actually, it was a moot point now. The entire reason for keeping it a secret had already happened, and by Milo’s own hand.

  “She terrified him into hiding a part of himself so he wouldn’t—”

  “She tried to protect her son. It’s what mams do.”

  “She conspired with Alton to—”

  “She tried to protect her son!” Howell’s hands were clenched on the steering wheel again. “D’you think for a second someone like Ceri Priddy—the Black Dog—didn’t know how this was eventually going to go? D’you think she hasn’t been watching this war coming, for bloody years, and trying everything she could to keep her son from it? Who wouldn’t do that, if they could? What mam or tad wouldn’t hide their sprog in a bleeding root cellar for the length of a war if they thought it could save them?”

  Ellis thought of Nia and her mangling of laws to keep her citizens safe. He thought of Lilibet and how she’d got teary and shouty when Matty enlisted.

  “She did everything she could,” Howell said, quieter. “Even went back in when they tried to use Milo against her, though I think she might’ve done that anyway.” He paused with a scowl before he shook it off. “But she always knew it was out of her control. She always knew that if war came, Milo would either find a way to go or be dragged. And so she made sure he was the very best at what he did. Made sure he’d be valuable to someone like Alton, because the life of a spy might be damnably dangerous, but the life of an infantry mage is several thousand times more so.”

  “Valuable.” Ellis couldn’t help
the skepticism. “Valuable how?”

  Howell lifted an eyebrow. “The boy speaks how many languages?” He snorted, didn’t wait for Ellis to answer. “How many people d’you know your age who know as much about politics as Milo does? About history, regional cultures, continental sects? How many mages d’you think there are who could’ve done what he did that night of the attack?” He paused, as though considering, then went on, “How many can Look without everyone around them knowing what they’re up to?”

  Well. That answered that question.

  “You knew.”

  “I know a lot of things. Like, for instance, it never mattered if Alton found out about the Seeing, because he always knew. It’s only that he and Ceri both pretended he didn’t. And likely would’ve kept on pretending, had Taraverde not got too big for its tyrannical britches. What mattered was that Llundaintref didn’t know. And now that Alton has snapped Milo up, the fight was over before Her Majesty’s Royal Services even knew there was one. Because even the HMRS don’t mess with the RIC.”

  RIC. Royal Intelligence Corps.

  And here Ellis had thought himself so clever for making all those little connections between Whitpool and the Home Guard and spies and conspiracies. When really, it seemed Whitpool was no less than a key hub of Preidyn’s entire intelligence network.

  Whitpool, for pity’s sake!

  Ellis watched the road for a while, trying to settle it all in his head, but it was no good. He planned this. He brought in a replacement. Trained me as one, and didn’t even tell me, Glynn had nearly wept at him, and yet—

  “I’m not sure I can believe Ceri trained Milo up to be a spy without him knowing it.”

  Howell huffed, plainly frustrated. “She didn’t train him to be a spy, for pity’s sake. She merely developed his talents and facilitated an education that, should the worst happen—and it has—would destine him for something other than cannon fodder.” He shot a knowing look at Ellis. “If you enlisted today, with your education and your time in the Wardens, would you go in as a lowly grunt sent right to the frontlines?”

  Ellis looked back out the window. Because, all right, point taken.

  “I’m only saying, boyo.” Howell clapped Ellis on the shoulder before reaching to switch on the headlamps, squinting a little as light splashed out in front of them. “Never underestimate a Priddy. And never count them out.” His mouth lifted in a half smile, fond and proud. “Don’t imagine you know everything about Milo, what he can do, what he’s capable of. And never doubt there’s so much more you don’t know.”

  Ellis thought about sorrowful letters and secret plans and, every goddess save him, bloody wretched violins. And decided he had no choice but to concede the point.

  Like mother, like son, Howell had said.

  Milo hadn’t seen it, or at least Ellis didn’t think so. Ellis certainly hadn’t seen it, this apparent similarity that made Milo leaving something sad and worrying but not at all surprising to anyone but Ellis.

  Now Ellis had to decide if he was relieved or even more pissed off.

  Slumping, he blew out a long, weary breath. “Do you…?” He pursed his lips, shook his head, almost embarrassed to ask the question, but not enough to outweigh the need to know. “Do you ever stop being angry at her?”

  Because Ceri had left Howell just as surely as Milo had left Ellis. And maybe she hadn’t done it with a letter that purposely arrived much too late to do anything about it—Ellis had no idea and no intention of asking—but she’d still left.

  “Never.” Not bitter or caustic, and there was no hesitation or doubt in Howell’s tone.

  Well. That was… something. Comfort, in a way, though small—tiny really, miniscule, but something.

  “You know a lot more about all this than I think you’re supposed to, Howell.” Ellis lifted an eyebrow. “You sure you’re not Brimstone?”

  Howell merely shot him a glare and grumbled under his breath.

  Ellis smirked and rested his head against the window. He let himself doze to the sway of the car and the hum of tires on the road.

  THE THING about Dreams was that they weren’t anything like people who didn’t have them thought they were. They weren’t anything like what Ellis had thought they were before he’d finally explained one to Lilibet in terms other than “nightmare” or “weird dream” and she recognized them for what they were. Even so, Ellis didn’t Dream like other people who had the talent—he couldn’t Dream about something on purpose; he couldn’t determine where a subject of a Dream was, or when the circumstances he saw might occur, or if they already had; he couldn’t always hear what people said.

  He Dreamed faces and expressions, mostly; determined moods by the quality of light through which he saw. Stark and monochrome if someone was angry; soft-focus and amber-lit if they were melancholy; reds out of nowhere, possibility coloring in the gray spaces of something he should be paying attention to; golds flickering at the edges of laughter or love or just plain goodwill. It was like being in a picture show, only there was no music, and no one could see him. He was an observer, watching the ghost-trails of others step off in a hundred different directions as they mulled alternatives, and then solidify again when they chose one. And if he was attentive, if he cared about what he was watching, he could mark details, analyze them, remember them.

  Milo was having supper in some place badly lit, terribly crowded—and loud, Ellis decided, because Milo kept leaning across the table, tilting his head as though he was having trouble hearing the person speaking. A violin case sat propped on the chair next to him. He was smiling, laughing, but… it wasn’t right. Tension sat high on his shoulders. His smile was that polite one that looked bright and beaming if you didn’t know him but alert and guarded if you did. His hand was tight around the knife that, by the state of his plate, looked as though he’d yet to use it to cut his meat. There was something else off about him, something…

  The earring. There was no earring in Milo’s ear, and from what Ellis could see, no hole as evidence there ever had been.

  Milo’s gaze slid somewhere over Ellis’s shoulder then back again, carefully casual, unconcerned. Ellis turned to look, saw a roomful of featureless faces, everything misted and colorless but for two—a man and a woman—outlined in the red of possibility so vague and blurred Ellis almost didn’t catch it. Unremarkably dressed, a bit shabby, even, plain and ordinary, but not quite pulling it off. They both had the stiff postures Ellis had only earlier recognized as someone normally in uniform suddenly out of it.

  Something burned against Ellis’s chest, a hot knob searing at his ribs, like someone had dropped a smoldering coal down his shirt. He patted at it. Set his hand over it. Reached into his waistcoat pocket, and pulled out the dragonstone. It glowed. Bright and hot enough to sting his eyes, his hand, except it didn’t.

  Milo sat up straight, head turning one way then the other, eyes narrowed. Frowning. Wary. Confused.

  The person across from Milo—a man, Ellis could see now, dark-haired and swart like Aleks but more widely built—said something. Milo shook his head, smiled, that careful one again, and said something back as the Dream began to break apart, fog bursting through Ellis’s vision and cracking it like glass.

  He woke, surprised and disoriented, to Howell shaking his shoulder and telling him, “This looks like something you’d best handle.”

  The dragonstone was in Ellis’s hand. It was hot. Reflex by now, he blinked out around him, looking for the dragon that must surely be near, but…

  “This,” Ellis said slowly, squinting past the overbright beams of mining torches and harvesting lamps aimed into the car, “is not Hendrop.”

  It was, in fact, Newridge, well east of Hendrop and more than halfway to Wellech. The car was stopped at the intersection where the road met the tracks of the Central line.

  “What…?” Ellis sat up straight and jammed the dragonstone, cooling now but still warm, back into his waistcoat pocket. He turned to Howell.

  “Ah,”
said Howell. He shrugged. “So.”

  He’d decided to just keep going and take Ellis all the way to Wellech, he explained. And had further decided that Ellis didn’t need to know about this decision, that he’d let Ellis sleep, until they got there.

  Which might’ve been fine, had it not resulted in a severe cramp in Ellis’s neck that ran all the way down his spine and into his hip, extreme gritty-eyed confusion at being the apparent focal point of a lot of suspicious gazes in the dark, and also a healthy dose of guilt for the inconvenience he was, albeit unwittingly and unwillingly, causing Howell.

  That wasn’t even counting the Dream he was going to have to pick apart and examine for every remembered detail later.

  “What is this?” Ellis finally managed to ask, waving out the windscreen at the… it looked like ten or so people out there, glaring lights all ’round, and if Ellis wasn’t very much mistaken, there were a few guns pointed at the car too.

  “Some kind of checkpoint,” Howell ventured. “Though I can’t say it looks official.”

  It wasn’t. Couldn’t be.

  Frowning, Ellis got out of the car. Half the lights stayed on Howell; the other half moved with Ellis. It wasn’t much better, but some of the glare dissipated, and now Ellis could make out a small flatbed lorry parked on the other side of the tracks. There were people seated in the bed, more lights and guns trained on them.

  “What is this?” Ellis asked again, putting authority in his tone this time, and censure, because none of it looked right or innocent. “Who are you people, and what d’you think you’re doing out here?”

  One of them stepped forward, an older man, thick-boned and redheaded, pale skin lighting up near white in the dazzle of the lamps. He had a rifle too, a fat snubbed shotgun that hung in his grip like a truncheon.

  Ellis wasn’t armed, he reminded himself. He wasn’t in Wellech where all the Wardens and pretty much everyone else knew him. He tugged the brim of his crumpled hat down to shield his eyes as he pulled himself straight, feet apart, and tried to watch everything at once.