‘Get some rest,’ Grace told the two of them. ‘We’ll regroup in the morning. Ellyn? You okay?’
Ellyn glanced back, tears silvering her eyes. ‘Sure boss.’
Sometimes when the job got too much, when terrible things happened, it wasn’t until you were safe that you could let yourself feel anything. Grace knew that as well as anyone. And Ellyn didn’t like to share her feelings. None of them did. It was too dangerous.
‘The bath’s in there, pet,’ said Lyssa in a curiously gentle voice. She couldn’t know what had happened, not in any detail, but she knew something had. She was intuitive. Grace felt respect blossom for this woman, who was kind when she didn’t need to be to people who weren’t that important. Ellyn was just a guard, after all. A no one. All of them were. That didn’t seem to matter to Lyssa.
‘I’m here if she needs us, boss,’ said Daniel from the opposite doorway. What else could she do? Daniel would keep an eye on her, Grace knew that too, and now the day was catching up with her. She felt dead on her feet, like a Barrow had raised her. Everything took more effort than it should.
Grace’s room was a whole new level of surprise.
They climbed to the third floor above the great hall – furnished at great expense by the Duke of Anlieu, Bastien’s something something ancestor two hundred years ago, a vast dining room, far too big for one man, that looked unused – and the long corridor opened up to a landing with a stained-glass window. Moonlight streamed through it, and gave the impression of a shifting world viewed through the fires and smoke of a bonfire.
It was a man, wreathed in flames. He was beautiful, strong and powerful, and his eyes were golden. They glowed as the light poured through them. Black thorns wound around his hands as if binding him.
Grace couldn’t help but stare.
‘The Hollow King window,’ said Lyssa. ‘A work of art, three hundred years old. King Anders commissioned it.’
‘It’s… it’s gorgeous.’
And unnerving. Grace couldn’t shake the feeling that she was being watched. Worse, it made her skin itch in that old familiar way, as if something was crawling underneath it.
Don’t be scared, Gracie. It’ll be all right.
The voice was an echo, a memory she couldn’t quite grab of a smiling woman with golden eyes and a tumble of shining red hair just like her own. It was something from her nightmares, from a world she didn’t remember, a world that had gone away. It was a memory of sunlight and waving corn, of a wide blue sky and somewhere she could never have been. Before the stone walls, and the grey clouds, before the darkness.
Grace shuddered. She was exhausted, that was all.
‘Come along, child. You look half dead. You need warmth and rest.’ Lyssa opened the door to the left. ‘I’m just over there.’ She pointed across the corridor to the second of the four doors. ‘If you need anything, just knock. You bathe and I’ll bring up the refreshments should you want them.’ She lit the candle inside the door and left Grace standing there, her jaw hanging open.
Realistically, in a building this large, it was not a big room. But it was still bigger than any chamber Grace had ever had to herself. The bed was four times the size of her bunk in the Academy and covered with freshly laundered sheets, lush blankets and a heap of pillows. Drapes hung around it, richly embroidered, the décor of a gentlewoman’s apartments. In a small adjoining room she found the full bath, the water warm, fragrant steam rising from it. She lit another candle in the bedroom, placed the one she carried in a holder in the bathroom, and stripped off as quickly as she could.
There was no wasting this. It would be a crime. She kicked her filthy clothes out the door and closed it behind her. Her body ached, she longed to sleep but the lure was far too strong.
She stepped into the water, her skin blushing as she did so. Sinking down into it was a luxury she couldn’t define. A gift unexpected. The bath wasn’t big enough to stretch out so she sat with her knees bent up against her chest, marvelling at this.
This had to be a mistake. No doubt it would be rectified but hopefully not until the morning. Besides, she thought, glancing down at the dirt bleeding off her skin into the water, it was too late now. She found a bar of rich and creamy soap, scented with sandalwood and orange, and began to wash herself. Normally she’d have to scrub and scrub to work up any kind of lather, but this was like cream in solid form. She washed her hair, wondering when was the last time she’d had anything more than a cold shower or a plunge in the communal baths. Her fingers worried at her scalp and she combed through the tangles until the strands fell wetly and loosely through them.
Finally she felt truly clean, cleaner than she had in years. Perhaps ever. No one had a bath like this in the lower echelons of the capital.
Eventually, as the water grew cold and her fingers pruned, she knew she had to get out. She was starting to doze and waking up hours later in freezing water was not going to be pleasant. She made herself stand and grabbed the nearby towel, soft and fluffy and made of wonder. When she wrapped herself in it and stepped out into the bedroom again, intent on finding her bags and digging out a shirt to sleep in, she found the tray left on the table, the bedlinen turned down and a nightgown there, waiting for her.
Clearly Lyssa had been busy.
Waste not want not, as she had always been taught. Still, it seemed like sacrilege to touch the sleek, soft material which hugged her like a second skin. And when she sat on the bed, it dipped softly beneath her, too deeply, too welcoming.
This wasn’t right. Couldn’t be right.
She put the nightgown aside, found the old shirt from her gear and made a nest on the floor at the foot of the bed instead. True, she did use the blankets and one of the pillows. She wasn’t a fool.
Larelwynn’s tower was not a silent place. It should have been, Grace had been sure of that, silent and miserable as a mausoleum. Instead, it made noises in the night, sighing with the breeze, creaking and groaning as it settled. She heard footsteps, voices and singing. But not enough to fully wake her. Instinct told her to be aware, to make note, but there was nothing she or her unconscious mind would consider an actual threat, not yet.
She knew when Lyssa made her way to her own bed. She heard others moving around, the servants and guards, she presumed. But there was nothing to concern her as she slept.
In the barracks at the Academy the ability to sleep restfully and still be alert in an instant if necessary had served her well. It was a skill she had always had. She wasn’t sure when it had come to her because her memory of life before the Academy was mostly non-existent. It had been hard and bitter, she knew that. She’d been lean and suspicious as a new recruit and only Helene, and later Daniel, had managed to break through that shell. She remembered one of the healers trying to talk to her about it. That hadn’t ended well. He’d reached out to touch her face. She’d broken his nose.
One thing she felt sure of as she lay there in near sleep, yet not entirely lost to her dreams, was that this tower was not as she expected. And she was sure that it was not as empty as it seemed.
As she drifted off she was sure she heard singing from overhead, a lullaby, in a strange lyrical voice. A girl’s voice. And then she heard a laugh, deep and melodious. His laugh.
She’d know it anywhere.
Oh, she thought, he has a lover installed here. Of course he does.
It shouldn’t have been the disappointment that it was. He was a noble and they were all the same, weren’t they? No wonder he’d been so keen to go up to his own quarters, away from her. She had just been an amusement, a distraction. That was all she had ever been. She should have known.
Chapter Fourteen
Morning brought a whole new set of problems. It always did.
‘The queen wants to see you,’ Lyssa said the moment she appeared. Bastien was sitting at the dining table with Ellyn and Daniel, both of whom looked more uncomfortable than she’d ever seen them. Daniel, of course, was tucking into an overloaded plate of eve
ry conceivable option of fried pork while Ellyn just pushed a pile of bread pieces around her plate, occasionally picking one up to shred it a bit more.
‘The queen?’ Grace asked.
What did the queen want? And why wasn’t Bastien looking at her? At all.
He drank from the mug in front of him, cradling it in both hands, gazing down at it as if it was the elixir of life.
‘She sent word this morning,’ Lyssa went on. ‘She wishes to welcome you to the palace and to ensure that you know that you are most welcome here. She does you great honour, Captain.’
Sure she does. I saw the look on her face when the king gave me his warrant. If she could have scratched my eyes out right then and there she would have. I’d be an idiot to think she wished me well.
‘When?’
‘She wants us to come to dinner,’ Bastien said in a voice that sounded like they’d been invited to an execution.
‘Dinner.’ That wasn’t what Grace had been expecting. She didn’t know what she had been expecting.
‘A formal dinner. Not private. There’ll be twenty or more guests. She wants to intimidate you.’
Of course she did. And how charming of him to put it so bluntly. But at least a dinner with a group meant he was less liable to be drugged. And she would be there.
‘I’m not easily intimidated.’
‘You’ll need a gown,’ Daniel said, unhelpfully.
That hadn’t even occurred to her. What on earth was she going to wear to a formal dinner? The look of panic must have showed on her face. Bastien grinned and she wanted to slap him.
‘Lyssa, please see to that if you will,’ he said as if he was doing no more than asking for the laundry to be changed. Perhaps he was. ‘Tonight. And in the meantime I believe we have work today.’
We do. Or at least I do and he’d promised to help. She still wasn’t sure why, but that hardly mattered. Not to mention they needed to work out who had tried to have Bastien killed, who had completely derailed their journey back here, who had sent that Flint to track him down.
‘Of course. Ellyn, Daniel?’
‘At least have something to eat first,’ said Daniel, through a mouth overstuffed with food.
Grace gave him her most innocent look. ‘I’m not sure I can, Danny. You seem to have eaten it all.’
Ellyn laughed and Lyssa tutted before indicating a sideboard behind her, full of everything Grace could conceivably want and some things she didn’t even have a name for. There was no sign of the usual runny porridge, cold congealed eggs, or bread fried in lard.
It was only when she had eaten that Bastien spoke again. ‘Will you join me, Captain Marchant? The prisoner has been brought in.’
‘The prisoner?’
‘The Flint from your friend’s inn. I plan to interrogate her and see what can be learned.’
They fell into an awkward silence. Grace studied the table. Her friend’s inn. Kurt was no friend of hers. And she didn’t like the thought of interrogating anyone.
‘She spoke of the Hollow King?’ he reminded her.
Ellyn cleared her throat. ‘It’s a legend. The king who went insane with magic, who started the Magewar. Lucien Larelwynn defeated him, forced him to agree to the pact and killed him. An old story.’
‘It’s so much more than that. He’s the reason we have the laws we have. The reason why mageborn must swear to serve the crown, and never aspire to wear it.’
Which left him in a predicament, didn’t it? Grace looked, directly at him. ‘You’re mageborn.’
‘Yes.’
‘And King Marius’s heir.’
He just nodded.
‘And… that’s the problem, isn’t it?’ Daniel asked. ‘Your… your highness… and that’s why they’re trying to kill you?’
Bastien raised an eyebrow. ‘Yes, I rather think it is.’
‘But they were…’ Grace frowned and shook her head. ‘Who sent them?’
Bastien pinched the bridge of his nose. ‘That’s what I need to find out. We need to interrogate the girl.’
Oh. Grace didn’t like this tack, or where it was possibly heading. ‘I… I don’t torture people.’
‘Neither do I.’ No, he probably had people for things like that. People like Hale…
The doubt must have shown in her expression because he smiled again. It warmed his eyes, suited his face, made him seem less cold and hostile. More like a living, breathing human being.
‘Oh, you’ve heard those stories too, have you? I’d love to know how they get started. No, I don’t torture people, I don’t experiment on mageborn and I don’t murder them.’
She opened her mouth, thought better of it, and closed it again. But she couldn’t stop the frown that she directed at him, with all the intention of burning him alive. The idea made her shudder. Perhaps she could. Like the Flint tried to.
And she was a Flint too, albeit a broken one without any power so to speak of. But her power seemed to be growing.
Ellyn spoke before Grace got a chance. ‘Did you… Kai…’ she tried to say. ‘Did you…’ She couldn’t quite get the words out. She turned her gaze to Grace in desperate panic. She didn’t know what to say.
Bastien shifted in his seat. ‘Your friend was dying. The magic inside him would have taken hold. He would have fed on the energies in Grace, and you, and on everyone in the Healers’ Halls and…’
It had almost happened to Helene. Grace suppressed a shiver as the old memories flared up inside her. Her friend’s eyes had glowed – like Kai’s, like Bastien’s sometimes did – and the water had crept over her skin like a living thing. And where Grace touched her, it had tried to consume her too, glowing specks dancing in the depths, its touch so cold it froze her. She shook her head, driving the ghosts of the past away. They weren’t talking about Helene or Kai. This was the long shadow of something so much worse.
The Magewar was three hundred years ago. It all ended when Lucien Larelwynn destroyed the Hollow King and freed the land from his tyranny, when he drove his sword through him and cut out his heart to burn it on the altar of the powers. Or whatever variation of his bleak fate you chose to believe. When the Larelwynns became the royal family and this land became Larelwynn. The pact with the mageborn had been the last defence for humanity, a way to stop the magic from running wild again. But sometimes it still went wild. It was always a risk.
‘Kai would never…’ Grace choked on the words and fell silent. Because he could have. She didn’t know. There had been a change in him before he died. His grip had tightened, his eyes had burned with unholy light. She had barely recognised him. If she was honest.
‘Perhaps,’ Bastien said and it was an unexpected kindness. ‘He was a Leech. He might have managed to transmute it in the end. But it would have left him broken. He would have wished for death.’
‘You don’t know him,’ she growled at him. ‘He would never have…’ And then she remembered who she was talking to. No one knew more about the pact and the mageborn than he did. He was the seneschal, overseeing them all. He took their homage and maintained their magical equilibrium. He was a Larelwynn. That history was part of him. His family were the heroes. Instincts made her shut the hell up. Let him believe what he wanted. Kai was better than that.
She pushed away what she had seen in him.
‘Perhaps,’ Bastien said again. And he stood up, leaving the table. After she had composed herself again she watched him. He was beautiful, if you could use that word about a man like him. Like a sculpture, like something from the temple or the tapestries. Like Lucien Larelwynn himself was meant to be. She’d seen a thousand depictions of him, for as long as she could remember. Dark hair, dark eyes, the sword raised over his head while the Hollow King knelt before him, defeated.
She probably shouldn’t be sitting while he was standing. Wasn’t that royal etiquette? She got to her feet again, and the others did the same, following her lead. They all stood at ease, hands behind their back.
‘So you want
to interrogate the Flint,’ she said at last. ‘To find out who sent her.’
‘Yes. I think she’ll be more cooperative now. Or at least I hope so. She’s a victim too. Bought, sold, used. I hoped you might help.’
‘Help you do what to her?’
‘Damn it, Grace,’ he snapped and turned on her. ‘I’m not a barbarian. I want you to talk to her. You have experience interviewing victims as well as tracking their attackers. She wears a collar, or used to. She was sworn to the crown as we are. Whoever recruited her and sent her here… that’s who I want to go after. Not some sad little Flint who will never raise so much as a spark again.’
Grace tightened her hands into fists, keeping them hidden behind her. The scars on her hands burned and the fire in her simmered angrily.
‘You took her powers? All of them?’ Daniel asked, startled.
Even Kai couldn’t do that. He could mute them for a while. To take someone’s powers, that took a strong ability, stronger than anyone she’d ever heard of. Grace narrowed her eyes, studying him again. A sad little Flint, indeed.
‘Like I said,’ he replied. ‘She’s done. And she’s young enough to live a perfectly normal life somewhere far away from the capital, where no one knows her. She can say she’s a widow and find a new home. Does that meet with your approval?’
Daniel didn’t let up. Suspicion darkened his gaze. ‘You’ve done this before.’
Mageborn were missing from the city. Mageborn vanished for days on end when they came here to pay homage to the king, through Bastien as seneschal. Oh, he’d done this before. Daniel might need to ask, but Grace didn’t. What worried her right now was how often and to whom? And were they willing?
‘Many times. Even by request. Now, will you do as I ask?’
Grace lifted her chin and looked him in the eye. If he was telling the truth – and she had no reason to believe otherwise – he could help the girl, even though she’d been sent to kill him. And somehow Grace wanted to believe him.
Mageborn: An absolutely gripping fantasy novel (The Hollow King Book 1) Page 18