Mageborn: An absolutely gripping fantasy novel (The Hollow King Book 1)

by Jessica Thorne

  Her headache pounded away behind her eyes. The sensation of magic in the air was still lingering, but it was fading now. She ought to be following it. Not standing here.

  ‘Are you feeling well, Lieutenant?’ Hale asked. Oh, he was too sharp for his own good, that one. She’d have to watch him.

  ‘Fine. Stay with the body, Hale. Make the arrangements you need to but make sure I know what you’re doing and where you’re going with her. Danny, where’s this captain?’

  The captain stood by Ellyn, an older Leanese man, with sallow skin and dark eyes. He wore the same bright coloured clothes. It might as well have painted a target on him.

  ‘Where is she, my Windtalker? What have you people done with her?’

  Grace glanced at Daniel who grimaced and didn’t make eye contact. ‘I just asked if someone was missing. Didn’t tell him anything. I thought—’

  ‘You Rathlynnese are all the same. You cannot take her. They all told me, down on the wharf, how you are rounding up more and more of the blessed. She’s a free woman. She doesn’t serve your crown or any other crown. Just my ship.’

  A Windtalker was what they called a Zephyr, Grace recalled, a mageborn who could control the air. Handy on a ship. Valuable even. The blessed was how they referred to mageborn in general. She had often wondered if it was a joke. Nothing about their lives seemed blessed.

  ‘Damn,’ she sighed. This was not about to go down well.

  The captain sensed the darkness in her mood. Maybe he was more blessed than he let on too. The anger drained from his face, replaced by concern. ‘Where is Losle?’

  Why couldn’t Daniel have told him? He was better with people than she was. Better at breaking their hearts, better at keeping them calm while he did it. ‘I’m afraid I have bad news, Captain. Perhaps if we could talk somewhere quietly?’

  He looked past her, saw Hale and then the body. The bright skirts stood out, their patterns unmistakable. She watched recognition and understanding creep across his face in stages.

  The pain hit her in a wave, all at once, crashing through her mind, and she flinched back from him.

  ‘No!’ he shouted and surged forwards, reaching out for the woman. Grace and Daniel caught him before he could get to the crime scene and disrupt what little evidence they had. He dropped to his knees, wailing out his grief. ‘My daughter! Losle, my little girl!’

  That explained the reaction. Grief swamped Grace’s senses but she held it off. They wouldn’t get anything from him now, but Daniel was already at work. Not always the greatest for the tough side of the job, but this… he was made for this.

  ‘Come away,’ he said in that kind, gentle voice that always worked. He wasn’t mageborn but his voice could be like magic. ‘Come and sit down inside.’

  ‘Daniel, it cannot be. Tell me. Who did this? What monster did this?’

  ‘We’ll find out. I swear, we’ll find out.’

  She watched them go, the grief and rage overwhelming the man. Daniel, being Daniel, would find out what she needed to know. He was already on first-name terms. But then her friend had grown up not far from here. He knew a lot of people. That was what made him so useful down this way. If he was a bit cagey about how he knew people, well, you could take the boy out of Eastferry…

  He knew what to ask, but it was patently obvious that the captain hadn’t killed his daughter. Or else he’d missed his calling on the stage. But Daniel should know better than to make promises like that.

  A Zephyr, lying dead in a Belport alley, with burnt hands and all the magic ripped out of her. A girl, a daughter.

  But this wasn’t the work of a Leech. Or at least not the normal kind of Leech. And it wasn’t a syphon, either.

  Grace flexed her hands, the scars she bore on her palms feeling unusually painful all of a sudden. Imagination, it had to be. Or stress.

  Truth and justice. That was what she had promised herself, even if she knew she could never have it. So she found it for others. Truth and justice.

  ‘Hale?’ Her new helper was peering into the girl’s eyes as if they could tell him what had happened. She remembered the old story about the eyes of a victim capturing the face of the killer. If only that was true.

  ‘Yes, Lieutenant?’

  ‘You’ve studied the mageborn, yes?’

  ‘As much as I can. It’s a fascinating area of research, you know? The more we can understand about them—’

  ‘What kind of a Leech could take all of someone’s magic so quickly?’

  ‘None of them. It takes time. Even the really powerful ones. There’s only—’

  He shut his mouth so quickly he almost bit his own tongue. Grace watched guilt make him squirm and didn’t look away for a moment. He couldn’t have been more obvious.

  She’d only once seen a man syphon power from someone else in an instant, or as near to it as didn’t matter. He had absorbed so much power that it should have taken hours, should have destroyed the Leech doing it. But he hadn’t seemed affected. He had barely flinched. If anything he had seemed stronger.

  Just sucked down all the magic running wild in Kai, and stood there, holding Grace off as if she was nothing at all. No threat, no danger, no one.

  The ability to drain someone in moments. And he never wore a mageborn collar. Who would dare to put one on a prince?

  ‘Don’t say it,’ Merlyn Hale hissed at her. ‘He’s blood royal. He’s a prince, the Lord of Thorndale.’

  The Lord of Thorns.

  Of course he was. Because that was just her luck.

  So she said it anyway. ‘He might be. But he’s also a suspect.’

  Chapter Five

  What do you remember?

  Being here, being at the Academy, induction, training, working.

  Before that.

  Nothing.

  Nothing at all? That’s hard to believe.

  Nothing.

  It was always the same lie.

  There were some memories. Not many.

  Sunlight filtering through long grass and a woman with red hair like her own, laughing, spinning her around. A pair of hands in hers, so strong, so gentle. And that song. That voice.

  Flames came easily and the long grass burned.

  ‘Never do it again, Gracie. Never ever. Promise me now. Never again.’

  And she promised. Oh how she promised. But she hadn’t kept the promise. She couldn’t. That was her fault. It was all her fault.

  Auntie bought her, body and soul, and Auntie burned the fire right out of her.

  She burned her and she burned her, over and over again until there was no fire left to burn.

  ‘You want to eat, you earn your keep.’

  Each phrase punctuated by a slap.

  ‘Just another mouth to feed.’

  A punch.

  ‘There’s been a war, everyone’s hungry.’

  A kick.

  ‘You’re no use to me. Not any more. You’re nothing. A liar. No one will ever believe you.’

  Only they couldn’t have brought her to Rathlynn and handed her over to Auntie. They were already dead. They had already burned.

  Grace struggled out of her nightmare. It wasn’t the first time that tangle of half-memories crawled through her dreams and she knew it wouldn’t be the last, but it still left her gasping for breath, her eyes burning. Not like the other kind of dreams, those moments in the golden light. This was dark and hateful. And he wasn’t there. No one was there. Just her, trapped in the past. Snatches of memory, echoes of a life she couldn’t remember, they swirled through the nightmare and left their ghosts in the moments between sleep and waking.

  Most people would say Grace was better off now, without the magic inside her, that whoever or whatever had burned it out of her when she was a child had done her a favour, lifting the curse of a life lived as a mageborn, shunned from society. And maybe they were right. The flames she’d conjured as a child had taken her life from her, her family, her home. Even the brief snatches of memories she still clun
g to made that clear. No one ever said it to her face though. Not twice.

  She dragged her aching body out of bed. The terrible wine had got her through yesterday and that wretched crime scene. It had kept her together enough to keep going until there was nothing else to do last night except sign off and collapse into the bunk.

  When had she last actually slept? After Kai died? But that had been broken and terrible, twisted with grief. Before they’d caught the Gore? Years ago? Had she ever really slept?

  She poured freezing water from the jug into the bowl on the nightstand and washed her face. It was a better way to wake herself up than screaming.

  Less antisocial too.

  Daniel walked by the door, singing at the top of his voice. Off-key. Because he always was. Livvie and Sana were giggling in the room next door. Colville yelled something about the showers being freezing this morning and Ingard called him a wimp, laughing at him. Some choice words followed. Sounds of the Academy. Sounds of her life, her home, her family, for want of a better word. She closed her eyes, listening, comforted. This place had saved her. She owed the Academy everything.

  Her dress uniform hung in the cupboard. That’s what she ought to be wearing today given where she planned to go. Eventually. She stripped off the oversized shirt, pulled on a tunic, ignoring the scars scattered over her skin – she’d had them so long they’d become an intrinsic part of her – and looked at the blue and gold jacket on its hanger. The only hanger she owned. The only one she needed. It wasn’t even a good one, just a twisted piece of metal on a lump of wood.

  Kai had given it to her. He’d probably made it himself. He did things like that. Or used to.

  No, it wasn’t a time for her dress uniform. One day she might even find a time when it felt appropriate. But not today.

  Instead, she put on her regular leather armour. It felt safer. The jerkin fitted snugly over her shirt and her belt sat tight around her waist, the sigils already replaced on it. She settled the leather strap of her baldric over her shoulder and sheathed her various weapons. Leather bracers slid onto her arms, like shields from her wrists up to her elbows. She studied her outfit, wondering if she could put on anything more and still move in comfort. Armour was figurative as well as literal. Because she had never felt quite so terrified in her life.

  It wasn’t just the reputation of the Lord of Thorns. It wasn’t just the things he did, the thing she had seen him do. And it wasn’t even the idea of confronting a member of the royal family, albeit the one they all wished had never been born.

  She could still recall the feeling of him in the room with her, the sensation of his body against hers, the quiet strength, the implicit threat of him. It was familiar. And not… not unwelcome.

  And he had sent Merlyn Hale to help her. Sure. Help.

  But while she still planned on going to the palace to see the healer and discover what he had found in the Zephyr’s body, she was also determined to interview the one person known to have the innate magic that could do such a thing.

  She paused at Craine’s office, waiting for the others.

  ‘Something I can help you with, Lieutenant?’ The commander sat at her desk, surrounded by files, spectacles perched on her hawk-like nose.

  That woman didn’t miss a trick.

  ‘My report from last night.’

  ‘Yes? Want to fill in the bit you left out?’

  Not. A. Trick.

  Grace stepped inside the office and pulled the door closed behind her. There were seed cakes in a box on the desk.

  ‘Your wife’s home?’ she asked.

  Craine glanced down at the cakes and smiled. Just for a moment. ‘For a while. She has another trip coming up though.’ Then her eyes found Grace’s again and all was business once more. ‘Your report, Marchant.’

  ‘There’s one suspect. I didn’t want to put it down. But… one Leech who I think could have done it. He’s already trying to interfere with the case.’

  ‘Is he now?’ Craine glanced down at the file open in front of her. ‘I suppose the Lord of Thorns sending his man down to aid you might look that way, yes.’

  So she knew about that too. Of course she did.

  ‘Any thoughts?’

  Craine raised her eyebrows. ‘Well it’s nice to see the traffic go in the other direction for once. He’s continually co-opting my people.’ Grace didn’t smile. She wasn’t sure if Craine wanted her to or not. It almost sounded like a joke. And yet somehow it didn’t. ‘Tread carefully, Lieutenant.’

  ‘Well, that was the idea, ma’am.’

  Craine rolled her head to one shoulder, then the other, with an audible series of cracks. She looked tired. Exhausted, if Grace was pressed. Not that she’d say it to Craine’s face. It was good that her wife was back. Maybe Lara could make her take some time off, or at least go home at night.

  ‘You might want to look at some of the case files. We’ve had a number of similar reports. No one’s followed up on them. No one as high profile as a captain’s daughter from Leane, it seems.’

  Grace’s stomach turned inside her. She took a step towards the desk and took the top file. Two months ago, a girl from Eastferry. Who gave a shit about a girl from Eastferry? No one, that was who. No one but her and Craine.

  ‘Same signs? The burns on the hands?’

  ‘Same signs. Never seen them before. Not until I started looking anyway.’

  Grace curled her hands up into fists, hiding them behind her back.

  ‘Commander? Have you been here all night?’

  Craine laughed bitterly. ‘Last night and many more, Lieutenant.’

  ‘But…’ she looked at the cake again.

  Craine shook her head. ‘It’s my honour to serve. Lara understands that. Sometimes it’s easier.’

  She glanced at the crutches leaning against the desk, just within reach. Craine didn’t get out much, not because of the pain involved in moving about since she broke her back and both her legs in the line of duty, but because she was a workaholic. She’d survived the last Great War and countless days on patrol, and still she pushed herself with every ounce of strength she had. And she expected as much from those who worked for her.

  ‘Now, you have an investigation to follow up on. I’ll go through these reports and have them for you when you get back. Take Sergeant Childers along with you until we get a new mageborn assigned. He’s reliable and he knows the city. And pick up some new sigils from Atelier Zavi before you go. You might need them.’

  ‘It’s my honour to serve,’ Grace said. Because that was what you always had to say.

  ‘Grace,’ Craine said. ‘Take some cake. I swear that woman is trying to butter me up, or fatten me up, for something. I suppose I’ll find out what this evening.’

  The Atelier mageborn forged sigils and weapons, and any manner of things. At the Academy this role was filled by Atelier Zavi Millan and there was not a single craftsman in all the kingdom as skilled as he was.

  Grace loved to watch him work, the mixture of artist, metallurgist and mageborn making her head spin. The warmth of his forge soothed her on the worst days and he had never thrown her out as he did with most other cadets. And a number of officers too. He let her sit by his forge and watch in silence. It felt so much like the home she couldn’t remember, one of the only places she had felt safe when she first arrived in the city. When she grew up it was still her place of comfort – that and the garden – and he still let her stay and watch him work.

  That was all. Watch in silence. Until today.

  ‘That Gore was a bad one,’ he said, without looking up from his work. His old hands were deft and strong, twisting gold wire into delicate patterns, tracing light through them to activate the spell.

  ‘Very bad,’ she agreed, not sure why he was breaking their tradition of working in silence. He was someone she respected, so she wasn’t about to ask. Take the win, Ellyn would say. Of all the mageborn, Zavi had always been there. Part of the Academy, like Commander Craine. Like random del
iveries of cake from Lara. While others came and went, he was a constant. He knew about Grace’s past, as much as anyone did. He knew what she was, or rather what she might have been. Like called to like. ‘We brought him straight to the palace, to the dungeons there.’

  ‘To the Lord of Thorns, eh?’ He spat to one side, away from his work, to ward off evil.

  ‘I met him. When Kai died.’

  ‘Did you?’ He didn’t sound surprised, not really. And he was waiting for more. She could tell.

  ‘He’s… he’s not what I expected.’

  Do I tell him that he killed Kai, she wondered. How on earth was she to explain that? Or that she’d let him? Well, not exactly. Not let him. But she couldn’t have stopped him. Kai and Zavi were both mageborn, both Academy-sworn. And the mageborn stuck together. Even when their magic had been stolen along with their memories. Grace wasn’t mageborn now, but she had been once. Not that she could remember. She had lost that ability along with her memories of life before the Academy. But something lingered still and the mageborn knew it. She wasn’t sure how it worked, this connection, but she wouldn’t be happy if it was Ellyn or Daniel. She wasn’t happy about Kai either. She had failed him. Perhaps even betrayed him. How would Zavi take that? They might not be blood relatives but Academy was family.

  ‘Bastien’s father was strange too,’ Zavi said. He finished the sigil and started another, working as he spoke. ‘Tall, same colouring, all contrasts and sharpness. Unearthly. So much magic in him. All kinds. Not just the one like most of us mageborn. Too many to count.’

  ‘How did his father die?’

  ‘Led the mageborn troops in the battle of Howe’s pass at the end of the Great War. Like a huge black crow he was, up in front of them all. The king had held him back until then. King Leonis, Marius’s father, that is. Afraid he’d lose control, or so they said. Unleashing someone… something, like the Lord of Thorns… well, the old king didn’t make that choice lightly. Tlachtlyans didn’t stand a chance. It ended the war, but still… He died that day. A lot of the mageborn did. The life of the Lord of Thorns always ends badly. And so do the lives of those who follow him.’