This one would too, she supposed. The fact Bastien had already etched himself into her thoughts and crept into her dreams so completely already just made ignoring him all the more difficult.
He was a royal prince, and if Marius died without naming another heir, destined for kingship. But that was impossible. He was mageborn. Maybe the whole kingdom would end up badly then.
‘Zavi, when the king dies—’
‘Divinities prevent it.’
‘Yes, of course. But when he does, will Bast— will the Lord of Thorns really be king? A mageborn king? I can’t imagine it.’
Nothing in their world allowed that. And yet, it seemed to be inevitable now.
‘There’s no one else, is there? Unless the queen conceives and that’s a bit difficult when they don’t share a bed.’
‘But she… I mean… if she had a lover…’
There were tests for that, of course. Magical and medical. But tests could be cheated. Results could be faked.
‘None but a Larelwynn can sit on our throne,’ said Zavi solemnly. ‘That’s the way it works since Lucien Larelwynn’s time. His bargain with the mageborn, the pact he made…’ If he meant to say more, he stopped himself. For a moment he focused on his work again. Then, after a pause, he went back to the subject at hand. ‘Every Larelwynn king needs someone to hold up his end of the pact, and that person has always been the Lord of Thorns. I don’t know what happens if it’s the same man. The Lord of Thorns as the king? Maybe it all falls apart. Or maybe not. If she conceives… well, there’s only Marius and Bastien to do the deed anyway. Bastien’s child could pass as Marius’s, don’t you think?’
Grace froze, thinking of the beautiful, golden-haired queen entwined with Bastien Larelwynn, his hands on her skin, his mouth on her mouth. The image flared violently in her mind and she stared into the bright flames. They grew and danced before her, heating her face.
Zavi hissed between his teeth and opened a vent, letting the excess heat escape. He gave her a look, a warning. Maybe. She’d never shared her fears about her magic with him. Nor with any of them. Except Kai. Her magic was gone. Everyone said so. So it couldn’t have been her who raised the flames. And that was what she would keep telling anyone who asked. She had to.
Zavi turned back to his work, the new sigil, and it glowed brighter than ever before.
‘Here,’ he said and tossed it to her. ‘A special one, just for you. For luck. There’s a bit of you in there anyway.’
She caught it out of the air and closed her hand tightly around it. It should have been hot, she realised, given how brightly it had glowed. But the metal was cool in her hand. You never turned down a gift from Zavi. You never knew when you’d need it.
It was strong, powerful. More than the usual ones. She could feel that right away. And coming from him, directly from him, made for her, with her and all she might face, in mind, it was more precious than any other one. She needed to keep it safe. With great care, she threaded it onto the thong she wore around her neck.
‘Thank you, Atelier.’
He snorted. ‘Keep it in case you run into your Lord of Thorns again. You may need it.’
Your Lord of Thorns. The thought made her shudder.
‘Will he be king?’
‘I suppose he will. A mageborn king.’
‘That’ll change things, won’t it?’
‘We can only hope.’ He rubbed his neck, his hand on the collar, pulling at it just a little to adjust it. We? Mageborn, he meant. All of them. But he looked directly at her when he said we. It made her shiver, although she hid it as best she could, squeezing the sigil he had just given her in her fist.
‘Not everyone likes change.’ She sighed. Many people didn’t want Bastien as king, she knew that. It was fine to have mageborn living in the city, working alongside you, doing the tasks that you didn’t want to, but ruling? No. It wasn’t just his reputation, or the stories that spread like wildfire about him. Assassins came out of the shadows all the time. Some came from other lands. But most were closer to home. The Royal Guard were brutal. So was he. Some of the mageborn might want him to rule, in the hopes that their lives might get better with one of their own on the throne. But few others felt that way. ‘They’re probably going to toss me out on my arse rather than let me see him anyway.’ She tried to make it funny. A joke.
‘I’d like to see them try, Grace,’ Zavi chuckled, more out of loyalty to her than anyone else, she suspected. ‘And if he has any sense, he’ll hear you out.’
She couldn’t admit that the thought made something twist inside her, or that for a moment, when she’d pictured him making love to the queen, the woman’s hair had been the same shade of red as her own, instead of gold.
The Leanese ship was gone. The captain must have shipped out at the first possible opportunity. Grace didn’t blame him, but it would have been easier to follow up on things if he was still here. Someone on his crew might have seen something and, while Ellyn, Daniel and Childers had spent the evening taking statements, they hadn’t brought her anything. Bright sunlight spilled across the docks and the breeze made the spars on the ships sing like wind chimes. Seagulls reeled around, shrieking like demons, which told her the daily catch wasn’t far off shore now. Soon the fishing fleet would descend and all would be swallowed up in the barely orchestrated chaos of the mart.
For now, it was almost peaceful. Or as peaceful as it got.
The pie shop on the corner of Fletcher’s Alley was open. It was little more than a hatch in a wall which led into a kitchen but all of Belport knew it. Academy officers too. There was no actual way of knowing what went into the fillings but by the seraphs they tasted divine. Grace wasn’t sure what magic Alyss used to make them. It had to be something.
But Alyss wasn’t there this morning. Stef, her father, leaned on the counter and stared at the water in the harbour.
‘Where’s Alyss?’ Grace asked as she slid a coin over and Stef handed her a pie.
‘Out.’
Grace frowned. ‘Really?’ She couldn’t imagine the cheerful, chatty Alyss doing anything other than this. ‘Where?’
‘Up in the palace,’ Stef grumbled. Alyss’s sweet nature must have come from her mother.
The pie was good, but not that good. It was just a pie. Grace glanced down at the crisp pastry which seemed a bit tougher than usual too. Lesser, somehow. Stef could make pies, no doubt about it, but not like his daughter.
‘Did she get a job in the kitchens?’ she asked. Divinities knew, she was a good enough cook, although Grace wasn’t sure common street pies would be regular fare up there.
‘Goddess knows. It was an offer she couldn’t refuse, if you get my drift.’
Ah, that kind of job. Her day of homage, vassalage, duty.
‘Want me to look in on her? I’m heading that way.’
Stef shook his head. ‘She’ll come back when she can. When they’re done with her. Just some test of her skills for the Lord of Thorns, so they said. It might take a few days.’
A few days? The day of homage was meant to be just that: a day. Usually no more than a few hours. How long did it take to get up there, kneel in front of the Lord of Thorns and make a promise? What was he up to?
‘Has that been happening a lot?’ she asked after she swallowed down a lumpy mouthful. Definitely wasn’t one of Alyss’s. It was only ever meant to be one day. It seemed to get longer and longer. Fewer mageborn in the city, some said, though where they’d gone she didn’t know. Larks, the stories called them, those who had flown far away from Rathlynn.
‘Too often. Davy Fisher only got back after the guts of a week and his mam said he just slept for days. Hasn’t eaten either. Exhausted, poor kid. Drained. And they had to send for a Curer to treat his—’
Then he seemed to remember that he was talking to an Academy officer and shut up.
Drained. She really didn’t like the sound of that. And what did the Curer have to treat? She was going to have to call in on the Fishers.<
br />
‘It’s all going to shit, isn’t it?’ Stef muttered. ‘A mageborn king, eh? Who would have thought it? The Lord of Thorns on the throne…’ But then he looked up and his voice trailed off.
A group of men filled the quayside, a few mounted, most on foot. They were armoured, with red tabards, the mark of royal blood and Royal Guard.
The Royal Guards on the streets were getting more difficult. Everyone said so. And some nobles too. Euan and his squad had broken up a bar fight the other night where he’d been sure they were mageborn, but they’d turned out to be uncollared, and nobility to boot. Minor nobles, but still. Faster, stronger, drunk on power as well as hard spirits. They’d walked away leaving wrecked furniture and a few broken bones, with not a scratch on any of them. Euan had been cursing them this morning in the refectory.
With the king ailing, and only a mageborn heir, the whole kingdom was racked with unrest. If Bastien stepped aside, as many said he should, other families would vie for the crown. They weren’t Larelwynns though. No one knew what would happen to the pact controlling the mageborn without one of the royal line on the throne. And if Bastien Larelwynn took the crown, no one knew what would happen at all. Could he do both? Magic was fickle, dangerous. Those who wielded it doubly so, or so the old saying went. Perhaps it was better, some people whispered, if the mageborn ran away, if they left the kingdom of Larelwynn completely.
The Hollow King had made a pact with the first Larelwynn king to save his skin, and save his mageborn people. He’d given up everything for it, including his life. No one wanted another Magewar, not like that. They’d barely survived the war with Tlachtlya and that had been mundane enough. People were scared. The neighbouring kingdoms were already getting belligerent. All along the borders, life was becoming dangerous.
Who was going to notice if a Leanese stranger got jumped in an alley and drained of magic somehow? A girl who wore too-bright skirts and stood out in Belport? Who was going to notice any of the others Craine had discovered? And who was going to notice if Davy Fisher didn’t recover, or Alyss the Pie-Maker never came back?
‘Boss!’ Ellyn waved at her across the quay and pointed up towards the Healers’ Halls. ‘We want to get a move on. Danny’s still down in the Rowan. We’re going to have to drag him out of the place. Is that one of Alyss’s pies?’
It wasn’t. It really wasn’t. Grace handed her the remains of it anyway.
The kids playing by the old well in the quayside had gone silent. They’d been almost as loud as the seagulls when she’d arrived.
Stef’s expression turned even more glum. Instincts made her look at the gathered men. Royal Guards weren’t supposed to operate outside the palace. When they did it was usually trouble. The Watch dealt with crime in the city if it wasn’t magical, which was the remit of the Academy. The Royal Guard looked after the blood royal. That was about it. Threats, wars, politics, that kind of thing. They were the strong arm of the king.
‘What are they doing here?’ Grace muttered.
Throwing their weight around from the look of it. Two of them were harassing the fishmonger’s boys while the rest laughed. All but one. On the magnificent sable charger nearest to them, a tall, handsome man watched absently, as if distracted by other things. The messenger with him handed over scrolls which he read carefully, commenting occasionally in reply. Clearly he was a noble, possibly some scion of the blood royal himself, to judge from his bearing, and his flawless features. He had thick blond hair, like gold, and his blue eyes were cold like ice. He ought to have been attractive, but he wasn’t. He chilled her to the bone.
And that was when Grace felt it. Magic where there should have been none. She wasn’t sure what it was, exactly, or where it came from, but the air shivered.
One of the boys, the younger one, went down on his arse as if his legs had just been swept out from under him. The bucket of iced water he’d been carrying went up in the air, flipped over and came down in a shower, soaking him. He cried out in shock and was answered with a roar of male laughter.
Divinities, she hated that sound.
Ellyn moved forward but Grace brought up a hand to stop her. She scanned the crowd quickly. Not one of them was collared. They all appeared to be Rathlynnese at first glance and there were no other markers of magic on them.
But one of them was, without a shadow of a doubt, mageborn. It was the only explanation for what she had just seen.
‘Make ready to move out,’ the noble called and they shuffled back into lines, ready to march to the divinities and the glories alone knew where.
Grace stepped into their path, blocking them.
‘Is there a problem here?’ The eyes of the noble alighted on her, on her uniform and her gaze, and, to her disgust, he smirked. The only word for that ugly expression on so handsome a face.
Something cold and clawed slid down Grace’s back. Irritation followed it.
‘Get out of our way,’ the man said when she didn’t immediately answer.
‘No reason for Academy officers to be interested in us, is there lads?’ someone called out. Dear goddess, there was always one of them, the joker, who thought their colours or their rank protected them. She waited.
A nasty laugh sounded, as if on cue. She didn’t know who it came from. But there was always one of them as well. ‘I dunno. Looking like her, she might be interested in me, what do you think?’
Grace scowled.
‘We don’t want trouble here,’ Stef called. ‘I’m sure they’re just on their way, about their own business, Officer Marchant. You know how it is. High spirits and all.’
High spirits. You could get away with so much because of ‘high spirits’ if you had the right name, or the right uniform, or the right friends. Or at least you could with some people. Not with her.
‘Problem, boss?’ Ellyn asked lightly, as she joined Grace, hands resting on her sword hilt.
‘Oooh, there’s two of them now. The little one’s for me, lads. Who wants to tackle the firebrand?’
Grace’s eyes flicked up to the nobleman again. Funny word that. Nobleman. She’d never seen much of anything noble about any of them.
And then, the unauthorised mageborn among them made his final mistake.
A gust of wind came from nowhere, sweeping dust and dirt into Ellyn’s face, and her friend stepped back shielding her eyes. And Grace spotted him.
A bald, scarred man smirked a moment too early, like he knew what was about to happen.
Grace moved, leaping forward, her hand already on a sigil which flared into light as she drew it. Her expert touch ignited it.
The unfairness of Kai’s fate blazed through her. That this fucker should flaunt his magic without fear of repercussions while Kai died to protect Rathlynn from rogues… that the uniform of the Royal Guards should protect him when the uniform of the Academy made Kai disposable? No. Not on her watch.
She grabbed him by the neck and brought him down with the sigil unfurling around his throat before he’d hit the ground. There was a brief, panicked surge of wind around her and then the spell worked, containing him. He didn’t even know what was happening.
Which was odd. His confusion was written all over his face. What sort of mageborn didn’t know about sigils and what they could do?
Grace looked up into a sea of blades, bristling all around her. But she didn’t care as she snarled the words of the Academy at him. ‘In the name of the crown I arrest you and charge you with the crime of being an unregistered and unsworn mageborn. You will submit to examination and yield up your magic for the greater good. In the name of the king.’
‘We serve the king, you stupid bitch,’ someone yelled at her.
Ellyn stepped in behind her, back to back, ready to fend off the goddess knew how many to do their duty. Because that was Ellyn. Grace could always rely on her.
An eerie silence fell over the quay. A moment like a bubble which, when it burst, could go either way. Spars rattled overhead, the waves whispered against the sli
p and the seagulls reeled and cried high overhead.
The noble in charge of this rabble of guards cleared his throat.
‘There must be some mistake, Officer.’ He even had the tone of a general. This… this wasn’t good. Still, Grace held her ground. Truth and justice. That was all that mattered.
‘Sigils only react to those with magic. He isn’t collared, so he isn’t a vassal of the crown.’
‘But he is sworn to the crown. He’s a guard of the blood royal.’
‘He used magic in public, General, without a collar to regulate it. That’s against the law. I have to take him in.’ She fought to keep her own voice steady. There was something here that didn’t feel entirely right, something she was missing or didn’t understand. It was not a good feeling.
‘Lord Kane,’ the man she’d subdued cried out in shock and genuine fear. ‘Lord Kane, please…’
The general – Lord Kane, it appeared, and Grace filed the name away for future reference – didn’t like being named right about now, that was certain from his scowl.
‘The law does not bend, and cannot break,’ he intoned in his perfectly modulated voice. The first precept of the Academy, the first law Grace had ever learned. Or at least that she could remember. It was written on her heart. When he said it, the words sounded like poetry. ‘You must do your duty then, Officer. Stand back, men, and do not interfere.’
They didn’t like it but they didn’t dare disobey him. More likely, she suspected, from fear rather than respect. They sheathed weapons and withdrew back into their ranks while she hauled the mageborn guard up onto his feet.
Kane turned his horse’s head, signalled to the other riders who had watched from a distance and gave a curt signal that they were leaving.
As he passed, Grace’s captive tried to fling himself towards his commander. She barely stopped him ending up under the hooves of the charger. But he managed to break free of her. ‘Please my lord, it’s a mistake. It has to be. I’m not a mageborn, my lord. You know that. Please!’
Mageborn: An absolutely gripping fantasy novel (The Hollow King Book 1) Page 7