Crown of Danger (The Hidden Mage Book 2)

by Melanie Cellier

  Tyron, who had been watching Alvin’s face closely, shook his head. “I don’t think they have those sorts of public buildings in Kallmon.”

  “What? No healing clinics? Or law enforcement centers? Surely they must.” I stared at our instructor.

  “Law enforcement have a barracks of their own, of course,” Alvin said, wary and uncomfortable now. “I believe it is located at the western gate, so we didn’t pass it. And the healing discipline has their headquarters in one of the wings of the castle.”

  “So you have no healing clinics the commonborns can access,” I said slowly. “Not even the sealed?”

  Alvin cleared his throat. “I believe there are some healers who will work for anyone able to pay their fee. But they travel to the homes of the afflicted. And of course the commonborns have healing assistants of their own, other commonborns like themselves. I suppose they must be located in the markets and such places. I’ve never given the matter much thought.”

  “Clearly,” I said, unable to keep the coldness from my voice.

  I had wanted to understand the state of the commonborns in Kallorway, but I hadn’t expected it to be so bad. Even before sealing, Ardann had healing clinics and other such services available to all. Admittedly, the use of mage healers required a fee—we just didn’t have the numbers to provide their services to all. But in the years since my parents’ marriage, they had increased the number of commonborn healing assistants located at the clinics, ensuring they, at least, were freely available to all. Their capabilities were limited compared to the mage healers, of course, but they trained alongside them and benefited from the increases in knowledge gained by the healing discipline’s mage researchers.

  A sense of foreboding rose inside me. I hadn’t expected to fall in love with Kallmon, but I suddenly suspected I wasn’t going to like a thing about this city.

  Chapter 16

  The carriages continued traveling south through the northern half of the city. The great castle loomed ahead of us now, its outline visible against the moonlit sky. Again it looked nothing like the elegant white marble spires of my home in Corrin.

  Instead the castle mirrored the gray of the city, its square shape only softened by the round towers topped with decorative battlements. But despite myself, I had to admit it had a certain presence in the dark night, not elegant exactly, but strong and commanding. Rather like its prince, in fact.

  The gates of the castle also stood open for us, and the enormous courtyard was large enough to fit all of our carriages. Despite the lateness of the hour, King Cassius and Queen Endellion stood waiting at the castle’s grand entrance to receive us, General Haddon lurking behind his daughter.

  I watched Darius greet all three of his relatives without any change in expression, although Jareth had an embrace for his mother and an easy smile for both his father and his grandfather. My mind wanted to read something ominous in his expression, but it was too dark, and I was too far away to see such subtleties.

  Duke Francis appeared, ushering me forward to take my turn greeting the monarchs, and I was suddenly conscious of my travel-worn state. But the feel of someone at my back made me glance over my shoulder to discover both Captain Layna and Captain Vincent shadowing me closely, one on each side. The presence of the twin gold robes bolstered my confidence, adding greatly to the impression I must make.

  When I swept my curtsy in front of the king and queen, Cassius gave me a mere cursory glance, his eyes lingering on the two guards behind me. Something like irritation flashed through his eyes, much to my satisfaction. If he had thought I would present an easy target in the capital, he was already discovering his mistake.

  The queen murmured standard words of welcome, which I answered in equally formal tones, but over her shoulder, my eyes caught on Darius about to enter the castle. A smile of thanks slipped across my face. We had only just arrived, and he had already come through on his promise that Captain Vincent would guard me in the capital.

  But his eyes darkened at my expression, his face growing colder rather than more friendly in response, as his eyes moved straight past me to his parents. I carefully schooled my own features, turning my smile on the queen instead, although inside I was fighting tears. It had been a long day, and I wanted my bed.

  The suite I was shown to by a stiff, formal servant contained two bedchambers and a vast sitting room that dwarfed my one at the Academy. I discovered, to my relief, that Bryony was to have the second chamber. I had half-expected Layna to insist on sleeping in the sitting room as well, but instead discovered a cot made up for her in my actual bedchamber.

  “Really?” I asked her with a raised eyebrow.

  Her expression didn’t change. “My instructions from Her Majesty were explicit. I do not mean to let you out of my sight.”

  I sighed. “Very well.” I forced myself to smile. “Thank you, Layna. I do appreciate it.”

  She allowed herself a small smile. “You’re forgetting this is my job, Your Highness. I didn’t select the Royal Guard so I could do shifts protecting the walls of a palace. I’m right where I want to be.”

  I regarded her doubtfully but didn’t argue, too tired to consider whether anyone could truly wish to be on constant high alert in the homeland of an enemy.

  When I woke the next morning, Layna was already up. She had stationed herself in the sitting room, leaving the door to my bedchamber propped open. I closed it just long enough to wash and dress before joining her.

  Layna had used the time to throw open all the curtains of the sitting room, and I moved over to one of the large windows to examine the view. The window looked south, over the back of the castle and the city beyond. Everything still looked gray, but in the bright winter sun it had a life to it that it had lacked the night before.

  Turning, I gave my room a more thorough look. Deep purple had been used for the curtains and upholstery and peeked through in decorative elements on the rug. I thought immediately of Darius, turning back to the window before Layna could see my rising flush. Would the color purple ever stop having such an effect on me? For my own sake, I hoped so.

  Bryony shuffled out of her room with an enormous yawn, giving the room a sour look.

  “Where’s your usual morning cheer?” I asked.

  “I left it back in those endless hours in that awful carriage,” she said.

  “I thought you lived in the Sekali Empire,” Layna said. “You must be used to long journeys.”

  Bryony dropped onto a sofa. “We don’t attempt to make the trip all in one day. I don’t know what possessed the duke to stuff such a journey into a single day.”

  I flashed her a look, my eyes traveling significantly to Layna, and Bryony grimaced.

  “I’m sorry. You’re right, I do know, of course, and thoroughly approve and all of that. Or at least, I will once I have the chance to actually stretch my legs.”

  I smiled sympathetically. Bryony wasn’t someone who coped well with being cooped up.

  “The official ball isn’t until Midwinter night itself,” I reminded her. “So I was thinking of exploring the city today. That should help.” I hesitated and glanced at Layna. “If you don’t mind.”

  “I’m here to protect you, Your Highness, not control your movements. You don’t have to ask my permission. Although I do approve of anything that keeps our location and movements as spontaneous as possible. That’s a defensive strategy in itself.”

  “Excellent, then it’s a plan.” I rubbed my hands together. “Now what about breakfast?”

  Layna pointed to a side table where a number of trays had been laid out. “Three servants dropped those off some time ago.”

  Bryony leaped to her feet. “Why didn’t you say so immediately? I told you all I needed was some food in my belly.”

  I exchanged a grin with Layna as the Sekali girl fell on the trays ravenously as if she had been starved as well as stuffed in a carriage all the previous day. I joined her at a more sedate pace, although my stomach gave me away by ru
mbling loudly.

  By the time we had finished the food—Layna assuring us she had eaten before we awoke—I was ready to send my compliments to the king’s chefs.

  “Whatever else Cassius does,” I said, “he certainly eats well.”

  Bryony nodded her approval before stretching and finally giving her usual bright grin.

  “I vote we get moving right away. If we stick around here too long, someone might show up to drag us to some mind-numbing official function.”

  A sharp rap on the door made her face crumple. “See, I told you,” she muttered, but not loudly enough for the sound to travel into the corridor.

  I started to move toward the door, but Layna gestured for me to stay back. Opening the door herself, she kept her second hand out of sight, a composition gripped at the ready.

  As soon as I saw who was on the other side, however, I gave a glad cry and hurried forward.

  “Faylee! You came!”

  Layna frowned but stepped back to allow me to greet the older merchant woman in my doorway. I pulled her inside and immediately turned to Bryony.

  “Bree, this is Faylee. She’s the head of the mighty Robart merchant family, and an old friend of my family, especially Aunt Saffron. Faylee, this is Bryony, an energy mage and my fellow trainee.”

  “A pleasure to meet you.” Faylee smiled warmly at my friend. “And don’t be too surprised, I’m older than I look.”

  I chuckled. It was a familiar refrain from the merchant woman, who didn’t look like she could possibly be in her early forties. She had confided in me once that it was the reason she had risen to be head of her family at such a young age. She claimed it gave her an advantage in business negotiations since people tended to underestimate her. Personally, I suspected her position also had a little something to do with her determination and intelligence—not to mention her close connection to so many royals.

  Bryony smiled back. “As long as you haven’t come to drag us off to spend hours bowing and scraping and smiling through our teeth, then it’s a pleasure to meet you too.” She looked at me. “Although I didn’t know you had any Kallorwegian merchant connections.”

  “I don’t. Faylee lives in Corrin, and the Robarts are Ardannian.”

  “Primarily Ardannian,” Faylee corrected in a satisfied voice. “We have recently expanded our network to Kallorway, and I have therefore stationed a junior cousin in Kallmon.” She grinned evilly. “This is a surprise visit. I do so love taking the younger members of the family by surprise.”

  I laughed. “I can imagine. And was he caught carousing and ignoring his responsibilities?”

  Faylee sighed. “Nothing so exciting, unfortunately. He’s rather staid and married to a lovely girl we coaxed over from a competing merchant family. She’s just had their first baby, so he was dancing attendance on her at home in a most dutiful manner.”

  “Ha! Caught out! There’s a new baby. That’s the real reason you were so eager to visit him, admit it.”

  Faylee had limited herself to a single son and daughter of her own, satisfying her love of babies with the constant offspring of her vast extended family.

  She grinned, unrepentant. “I am nothing if not a dutiful subject of my monarch. If there were squidgy baby cheeks to be squeezed, it was nothing but coincidence.”

  Both Layna and Bryony looked confused, but I grasped the merchant woman’s hand. “Thank you for coming. I really do appreciate it.”

  She smiled and patted my cheek. “Anything for you and Ardann, Verene. You know that.”

  “Do you have some people for me to meet?” I asked.

  She nodded. “If you can be spared from the castle. I only have today, I’m afraid, because I promised my family I would head home tomorrow.”

  “We’re currently plotting to sneak out of the castle before anyone can announce any alternative plans,” Bryony said. “So I suggest we all move fast.”

  “I like her,” Faylee said to me with a grin.

  I grinned back. “Most people do. And as far as we know, we are free to spend the day how we like. Most of the trainees have family here for the festivities, so no doubt they’ll be spending the time with them.”

  “In that case,” Faylee said, “my carriage awaits.”

  We started down the gray stone corridor, Captain Vincent emerging from the shadows to join Layna at our backs. Faylee regarded him with a raised eyebrow, but when none of the rest of us commented, she stayed silent also.

  It didn’t take us long to reach the main staircase and then the entranceway below. No one challenged us, and I saw no sign of any of the Academy instructors as we escaped into the crisp air outside.

  I didn’t know what means Layna had used to communicate with the stables, but mounts were waiting for both her and Vincent. They swung up into their saddles as the rest of us climbed into the waiting carriage, and we were soon outside the castle walls.

  Faylee’s coachman kept to the main road for a short time only, passing some fancy shopfronts that I hadn’t seen in the dark the night before. Positioned near the castle, they were clearly for mage customers. Did Faylee’s family have wares in any of their windows?

  We didn’t stop at any of them, however, turning instead onto a narrower way that led us into the depths of the city. Here the houses stood much closer together, in some places built in long connected lines. But vines grew up many of them, giving life to the uniform gray. The traffic on the street drove the two captains away from the windows. Layna signaled with her hand that they would ride ahead of and behind the carriage.

  “I’m glad to see you have such vigilant caretakers,” Faylee said approvingly. “Your family will be glad to hear of it.”

  “I can’t move without tripping over someone,” I told her in a wry voice. “I defy any assassin to get anywhere near me.”

  “Assassins don’t necessarily need proximity, don’t forget,” Faylee said in a more serious tone.

  “Yes, of course, but I’m shielded. Neither of you can feel it, but Layna has had me in a bubble of power ever since we left the Academy.”

  I exchanged a glance with Bryony. And I had defenses of my own, although I couldn’t tell either my bodyguard or my old family friend about them.

  “So where are we going?” I asked, wanting to change the subject. “I hadn’t initially realized I would have to stray so far to meet the influential commonborn merchants of the city, but I’m rapidly gaining the impression that the situation for commonborns in Kallorway is different indeed from in Ardann.”

  Faylee glanced at Bryony.

  “You can talk freely in front of Bree,” I said. “I trust her completely.”

  Faylee nodded once and then grimaced. “There’s a reason it’s taken us twenty years to expand into Kallmon. You don’t realize just how useful all those compositions are until you don’t have access to them anymore.”

  “Can’t you supply them from Ardann?” I could imagine that Kallorwegian mages might be reluctant to sell compositions to Ardannian merchants over their own local families, but the Robarts had always been well supplied.

  “It’s not the supply that’s the issue.” A grim note entered Faylee’s voice. “It’s the law. Commonborns, even sealed commonborns, are not permitted to work compositions.”

  My mouth fell open. “Not permitted? As in…never? But—”

  My words faltered as my mind spun over the many limitations such a ruling would create. So there were no mage and commonborn pairs working in tandem in Kallorway then. I had assumed there was just no need for them at an Academy overflowing with mages.

  The reason for the law became apparent after a moment’s thought, although it left a sour taste in my mouth. King Cassius himself was sealed. If the sealed commonborns could work compositions from unsealed mages, then what made them different from him? The proud Kallorwegian king could never stomach such a situation. But to cripple his entire kingdom for the sake of his pride…

  No wonder Darius was determined to seize power. Kallorwa
y needed new leadership.

  “How did I not know about this?” I asked at last.

  “You’re too young to remember what it was like during the war,” Faylee said. “But most of us still remember. Kallorwegian commonborns are hardly a high priority for Ardannian mage society at the best of times, and after the war most people rejoiced to see Kallorway growing weaker while we grew stronger.” She shrugged. “And now the antics of the king and his father-in-law take up the attention in Ardann, leaving few to care about the state of the Kallorwegian commonborns.”

  I shook my head. This information only confirmed my thoughts from the beginning of the year. The position of the commonborns had been an oversight in my briefings. Perhaps they had been left out precisely because they held so little power at court compared to their Ardannian counterparts. But I still believed they could have a part to play.

  Loud music pulled my attention back to the window in time to see a market square go flashing past. I had the impression of many stalls and of laughing crowds and green garlands before the carriage moved on. I recognized the decorations from the year before, although they lacked the splash of red from the Ardannian berries.

  “That looked jolly,” Bryony said. “Are you sure we can’t stop there?”

  Faylee smiled. “Midwinter markets are scattered throughout the city and are well-frequented. They do make an appealing picture, don’t they? Everyone is busy buying supplies for the upcoming holiday, and everyone seems to be in a better mood than normal. Some things aren’t so different between Kallmon and home.” She rubbed her hands together. “It’s an excellent time of year for merchants.”

  “So will we stop at one?” Bryony asked hopefully.

  Faylee glanced out the window. “I don’t want to give your poor guard a heart attack by taking you to a crowded public market. We’re going to a private residence instead. But don’t worry, Bryony, it’s almost Midwinter, so there will still be festivities.”