She looked away as Imaiqah hurried them out of the far end and up a tiny flight of outdoor stairs. The buildings had become cramped boxy apartments, designed to cram as much living space as possible into a tiny area. Imaiqah knocked on a door, whispered something to the woman who opened it and then led the way inside. The woman gave Emily and Alassa a sharp look, but didn’t seem to recognize either of them. Emily breathed a silent sigh of relief as she turned and beckoned for them to follow her. Inside, the corridor was dark, barely illuminated by light streaming in from a window at the far end. The woman stopped in front of a door and pushed it open.
“Ye have paid for ten days,” she said, in a scratchy voice that sounded vaguely foreign. “Should ye not pay for more days by the seventh, ye will be evicted. Ye may not bring guests here without ma permission.”
Emily nodded and stepped into the room. It was tiny, barely large enough for the three of them to stand upright together, illuminated by a single flickering lantern. Emily closed her eyes and concentrated, sensing no trace of magic within the tiny compartment. The bed was barely large enough for one person, let alone two. At least the blankets appeared relatively clean. One look in the washroom told her things she didn’t want to know about it.
Imaiqah closed the door and sat down on the bed. “I miss Whitehall,” she said. “The rooms there were so much nicer than this.”
Alassa had a more practical point to raise. “Who was that woman?”
“Madame Comfort,” Imaiqah said, as if she expected the name to explain everything. It meant nothing to either of her friends. “She…runs this place as a boarding house for female visitors to the city. Most places refuse to take women unless they are accompanied by their male relatives–those that do take women are often rather unsavory. Just don’t bring any men here.”
“Oh,” Alassa said. “Is she discreet?”
“She won’t breathe a word about any of her guests to anyone,” Imaiqah assured her. “And this is the last place anyone would look for a princess.”
“I can see why,” Emily said. A small cockroach was crawling across the floor. Whitehall was nearly free of such pests, but they would be epidemic in the cities. Professor Thande had told the class that cockroaches were useful in certain potions that granted increased resiliency. Given how hard they were to eradicate, Emily could well believe it. “Are you going to stay here?”
“Not now,” Imaiqah said. She made a face. “Can you imagine what it would do to my father’s reputation as a councilor if his daughter stayed here?”
She stood up and put her hand on the door. “Cast one of those personal wards we played with at Whitehall,” she ordered. “I’ll be able to come in; everyone else will have to break down the wards before they can get at you. Just…just be careful if you leave. This district is not safe.”
Emily watched her go, then cast the first ward into the air. They’d experimented for hours at Whitehall, learning how to shape wards that were keyed to the three of them, without allowing others to pass without a struggle. Like so much else they’d been taught, it did have a practical application, although it hadn’t been perfect. Emily’s expanded wards had caught Imaiqah and Alassa–the other two who were supposed to have access–several times.
“Done,” she said, finally. The privacy ward was low-power, but that wasn’t a bad thing. Anyone who wanted to peek on them would still have to break it down, alerting her. “I should check the ways out…”
She hesitated as she realized that Alassa was shaking. The shock was finally getting to her. Emily reached out and enfolded her friend in a hug, feeling her trembling. Alassa had seen her uncle collapse–perhaps die–and her father blasted down by madmen with wands. Who knew what had happened to King Randor? Emily knew that the coup plotters would probably want him to surrender his authority peacefully–or as peacefully as possible, given that they would be forcing him to abdicate with a knife at his throat–but what would happen then? Had enough of the Confirmation been carried out to make Alassa his legal heir?
“They won’t kill your father,” she said, and prayed that she was right. “They can’t do anything to him until they get their hands on you.”
The possibilities kept spinning through her mind. The duke could take the throne if Randor and Alassa were dead–but if he took the throne now, he would only legally be regent for Alassa. On the other hand, if he controlled the army and had support from a majority of the barons, it wasn’t likely to matter. However, if the true plotters were some of the barons, they’d need Alassa to use as a puppet queen. Even with the Royal Bloodline, there were plenty of ways to make someone do what you wanted.
“You need to sleep,” she said, as she pulled back the cover. They might have to leave without warning, so there was little point in getting undressed. Besides, she had her doubts about how safe the tiny box-like room actually was. “I’ll secure the wards and then sleep next to you.”
“Don’t go,” Alassa said, as she lay down. “Please.”
Emily nodded, although Alassa couldn’t see her. “I won’t,” she said, out loud. “I’m going to be here.”
But what were they going to do?
Getting back to Whitehall wouldn’t be that hard, she suspected. With a little effort, they could catch a ship from Zangaria and sail around the Allied Lands until they reached Vonda, where they could hire a coach to take them the rest of the way. And once they got there, no coup plotter could hope to get at Alassa…but she’d become a prisoner, trapped within the wards. Whitehall’s political neutrality would prevent it from offering overt support to the princess. All it could do was offer safety as long as she stayed there.
She could ask Void to help…but she didn’t know how to contact him. All of their meetings had been organized by him, without warning; she wasn’t even sure how to contact the grandmaster without risking detection. And the grandmaster might well refuse to pass on a message. God alone knew what he’d heard from Zangaria by now.
And she had no way to know what had happened to Lady Barb. A prisoner, perhaps, or simply dead. The coup plotters wouldn’t want to keep a trained combat sorceress alive, not when they could simply cut her throat. She would be too dangerous to them.
Emily yawned and lay down on the bed, feeling Alassa pressing against the thin wall. She knew she should explore the building and make sure that she knew all of the possible exits, but she was just too tired. Staying awake all night had taken a toll out of her, even before she’d been forced to draw on so much magic just to survive. Her eyelids suddenly felt too heavy to keep open…
Snuggled against Alassa, she quickly fell asleep.
Chapter Thirty-Four
IT WAS PITCH BLACK WHEN SHE awoke, the lantern having long since burned out. Emily started as she felt someone pressing against her, then remembered everything that had happened since the ceremony had begun. King Randor was a prisoner–she hoped - and Alassa and Emily were fugitives. Carefully, she pulled herself free of Alassa and cast a light ball into the air. It illuminated the entire room in pearly white light.
Emily’s head spun as she sat upright. How long had it been since she’d eaten? There hadn’t been any time for a snack at Imaiqah’s, which meant that the last time she’d eaten had been the small breakfast before the ceremony. How long ago was that? She could have been sleeping for hours after spending the entire night awake. Shaking her head, Emily reached for the knapsack and retrieved the bread, tearing it into strips with her bare hands. It was messy and sent crumbs falling everywhere, but there was no choice. The bread and cheese tasted almost heavenly as she wolfed it down.
After testing the wards, she pulled herself to her feet and opened the door, stepping out into a dim corridor. There was no one around, as far as she could tell, but she cancelled the light ball anyway, instead using one of the spells Sergeant Miles had taught her to see in the dark. Silently, she padded down the long corridor and peered out the window at the end. The sun was just starting to rise over the mountains. It had been ear
ly afternoon when they’d arrived at the tiny room. They’d slept for nearly sixteen hours.
Alexis looked dim to her eyes, although that shouldn’t really have surprised her. There were no such thing as streetlamps in this world, even primitive gas lamps; the streets were wrapped in shadow that even her night-vision spell couldn’t penetrate completely. She could hear some chatter in the distance as the fishermen prepared for another day on the water, but she couldn’t see any of them. And the window opened in the wrong direction to see the castle.
Shaking her head, she explored the rest of the floor as quickly as she could. There were no such things as emergency staircases in this world, she realized, after checking out both windows. If they had to climb out the window, they would have to drop down at least two floors before they hit the ground. There were spells that could help with that, if there was no other choice, but they were easy to disrupt. Sergeant Miles had told her about dozens of magicians who had loved to fly, until someone disrupted their spells and sent them plummeting to their deaths.
Returning to their room, she tested the wards again before opening the door. It had been bad enough being trapped by her own wards at Whitehall, where it had been humiliating, but here it would be disastrous. The wards allowed her entry and she stepped back into the room, closing the door behind her. There was a brilliant flash of light and she yelped in shock, covering her eyes. Alassa was sitting upright, her hand raised and ready to cast another spell.
“I’m sorry,” she muttered, as she dimmed the light. “I woke up and found you gone…”
“I just needed to check out our surroundings,” Emily explained, rubbing her eyes. “Can you remember how to levitate?”
“I also remember getting yelled at for going up too high,” Alassa said. She reached for the knapsack and pulled out an apple, which she bit into thoughtfully. “Why do we need it?”
Emily explained, quickly. “We might be able to get out that way even if we weren’t being chased,” she concluded. “The woman who owns this place would never know that we were gone.”
“Maybe,” Alassa offered. “But few things are completely missed. There was a man in the court who liked”–she shook her head slowly–“something that I was too young to know about. Or so I was told. It involved magic and a skilled witch. But he thought it was a secret and yet everyone knew about it.”
Emily rolled her eyes. There were five books on sex magic in the library at Whitehall–and they had all been very well thumbed. Lady Aylia had told her rather sarcastically that almost every known book on sex magic–and rituals that required any form of sexual activity–had been written by adolescent male magicians. Emily had glanced through one of them and hadn’t been able to decide if she should be impressed by their ingenuity or shocked by some of the more perverse aspects of the rituals. They certainly didn’t seem very magical.
They ate in silence, lost in their own thoughts. Anything could be happening outside, while they were confined to a tiny room that had become their entire world. Emily wondered if they dared try to walk outside later, before dismissing the thought. They’d need to hear from Imaiqah first…but what if they never saw her again? The coup plotters could have arrested her entire family by now and Emily would never know about it.
The wards sparkled with energy. Emily looked up sharply, then relaxed as the door opened to reveal Imaiqah. She looked tired and worn–and not a little fearful.
“Too many guardsmen on the streets,” she said, as she sat down on the bed. “I had to befuddle one of them to escape.”
Emily frowned. “They know they’re looking for female magicians…”
“I befuddled him hard enough that he shouldn’t know he was befuddled,” Imaiqah said. “Besides, from the look in his eye, I don’t think he was taking the search for you two very seriously at all.”
“Never mind that,” Alassa said. “What is happening outside?”
Imaiqah looked down at the wooden floor. “The heralds have claimed that King Randor has abdicated in favor of his brother, the Duke of Iron,” she said. “Apparently, the duke has the complete trust and support of the barons…”
Alassa snorted, rudely. “They couldn’t agree on jumping in the pond if their britches were on fire,” she said. “And as for trust…”
Her voice trailed off. “Is it really him, then? My uncle?”
“I haven’t seen him in person,” Imaiqah said, gently. “He could be a prisoner too.”
Emily gritted her teeth. The interrogated prisoners had sworn blind, under the strongest truth spells Lady Barb knew, that the Duke of Iron had given them their orders to kill Emily and Imaiqah. But the duke had also sworn that he had nothing to do with it–and he had been under truth spells as well. The only way to resolve the contradiction would be to assume that the prisoners had thought that the duke had given them their orders…
She looked over at Alassa. “Could the duke have been replaced by someone else?”
“I rather doubt it,” Alassa said, sarcastically. “I could feel him; he shares part of the Bloodline. No one could fake that.”
Emily nodded. At least Alassa wasn’t falling into despair. “Imaiqah,” she said, slowly, “what is the situation like on the streets?”
“There are plenty of guardsmen on the streets in the inner city,” Imaiqah said. “There have been a number of fights between them and locals who want to move their stuff around…but for the moment, they have the streets under control. Father was at the council yesterday and he told me that the councilors can’t make up their minds what to do.”
“Right,” Emily said. The sergeants had told her to gather intelligence, so that was what she would do. “How many of them are there in all?”
“We’re not sure,” Imaiqah admitted. “At least a thousand, perhaps more.”
Emily considered it, tossing the thought over and over in her mind. Moving a vast army into Alexis without being detected would be difficult, to say the least. What if the enemy plotters were much weaker than they’d thought? Putting so many men on the streets could easily be designed to create the appearance of strength to mask true weakness. It wasn’t something they could count on, but maybe it could be confirmed.
Alassa leaned forward, thoughtfully. “Who are they?” She asked. “The Royal Army? Or the duke’s personal guard?”
“The Army,” Imaiqah said. “Does it matter?”
“It might,” Alassa answered. She studied her pale hands carefully, then looked up. “If it is the regulars, it does point to the duke.”
Emily heard the bitterness in her friend’s voice and shivered. The Duke of Iron was a stranger to her, but he’d been Alassa’s uncle ever since she’d been born. It was easy to imagine him urging her mother and father to spoil her, just to make her easy to manipulate in later life, yet…he had been her uncle. She loved him. The thought of him betraying her had to be maddening.
And yet it wasn’t unprecedented. Mary of Scotland had been betrayed by her uncles, a betrayal that had led to the collapse of her reign years later. How many other queens and princesses had been manipulated and betrayed simply for having been born female and then assumed not to have the strength to hold on to the throne? But then, male kings and princes were also the targets of intrigue. It just tended to be viler when women were involved.
“He was bound to his father, King Alexis III,” Emily said, slowly. “Would that binding have passed to your father?”
“It should have done,” Alassa said. “My father would have become the Prime, the linchpin of the entire Royal Bloodline. I don’t think the duke could have avoided becoming bound to him.”
She looked down at the floor. “He has to be stopped,” she said. “Whatever the cost, he has to be stopped.”
“My father wishes you to meet with some of the councilors,” Imaiqah said, softly. “They are unsure who to support.”
Alassa stared at her. “But…they’re just councilors,” she pointed out. “They don’t have any soldiers…”
“They have city guardsmen,” Emily said. And they’d had funds from taxes. “They might have more military power than you think.”
Imaiqah stood up. “There’s also a reward on your head,” she said. “Apparently, you’re being blamed for an attempted coup that crippled your father. Most people don’t find that unbelievable.”
Alassa put her head in her hands, her long golden hair falling down over them. Of course they believed that she would strike against her own father. Everyone would have known her as the royal brat who used magic freely, without consequences; the girl who used to make Imaiqah do her homework while tormenting her at Whitehall. How many commoners had ever met her? Imaiqah was the only person in Zangaria, outside the aristocracy, who might understand that Alassa had changed.
“My father believes me,” Imaiqah added. “But the others…they don’t know which way to jump.”
“They’ll stay on the sidelines until it is too late,” Emily muttered. If the coup plotters had any sense, they would refrain from purging anyone until their grip on power was secure–then they’d start distributing terror and oppression. The duke probably had a handful of barons lined up behind him already…now, seeing they’d been taken prisoner at the Assembly, he was probably collecting their oaths of loyalty. “You have to talk them out of it before it is too late.”
“I’ll talk to them,” Alassa said. “I take it we’re not meeting in their chambers?”
Imaiqah shook her head. “They’ve been guarded since last night,” she said. “The councilors, thankfully, do have other places to meet.”
She led them out of the room, cautioning them to leave nothing behind. The locks were flimsy; a good kick could easily break one down, while the owner hadn’t bothered to pay for a magician to protect the rooms. On the other hand, most of the people who stayed in the rooms wouldn’t have anything worth stealing. Adding additional protection might convince potential thieves that wasn’t true.
Lessons in Etiquette (Schooled in Magic series) Page 32