A Blight of Mages

by Karen Miller

  Standing, Morgan hustled Ranmer until the pother was backed into the corner furthest from the bed. “I am not convinced that any of this is natural.”

  “Sir,” the pother said, glaring. “Do you think to blame me for his lordship’s collapse?”

  “Can you tell me where else I should look?”

  “Be warned, Councillor Danfey,” Ranmer said, frigid with fury. “Accuse me of incompetence—or worse yet, some deliberate malfeasance—and I will lodge a formal complaint with the Council. You have neither grounds nor proof to question my reputation. Furthermore, such an attack on my good name and competence will ensure that not only will I never set foot here again, you will struggle to find any pother prepared to take such a risk.”

  Shaken, Morgan retreated. Was he wrong? Did his father’s collapse have nothing to do with Sallis Arkley? Was he letting his rage at the man, his frustrations over Maris Garrick, his fear for his father, affect his judgement? Possibly. And if Ranmer were indeed blameless, to lose his skills now would be a disaster.

  “Forgive me, sir,” he said hoarsely. “I am not quite myself.”

  Ranmer looked at him. “No,” he said at last, unbending. “Which is understandable. Councillor, do not let dismay overturn reason. Lord Danfey has rallied. And he’ll gather even more strength from your continued presence, I’m sure. Assuming you will be here some goodly time?”

  “Yes. I’m staying.” Morgan looked again at his father, stuporous beneath his blankets. “But can you remain in the mansion tonight, Ranmer? I need you to see my father through this crisis.”

  Ranmer shook his head. “Alas, Councillor, I have several urgent cases come suddenly upon me. But I shall not leave until I am confident that Lord Danfey is in no imminent danger. And of course, should there be another crisis, I will return.”

  It would have to do. In truth, he was fortunate Ranmer would do so much. “Very well.” Morgan returned to the bed. “My lord? I have good news that will cheer you.”

  With an effort his father dragged open rheumy eyes. “It’s done?” he croaked. “You’re handfasted?”

  Even were they alone, he’d not have confessed the whole truth of his time with Maris. Lord Danfey could be crude, but he had old-fashioned notions. “I have Parnel Garrick’s consent. His daughter will be the next Lady Danfey.”

  “Morgan…” His father’s weak smile revealed bloodied gums and missing teeth. “That is well done. I knew you’d not disappoint.”

  “Sleep now, my lord,” he said, and kissed his father’s clammy brow. “I’ll be here when you wake.”

  Downstairs, he found Rumm in the foyer, exchanging old cut flowers for fresh. Seeing him, the master servant fumbled a dewy spray of violet golifloss. “Sir, his lordship?”

  “Holds fast.”

  A shuddering breath. “I’m pleased to hear it.”

  “I know you are, Rumm,” he said, and briefly clasped the man’s shoulder. “Tell me, where is Mage Lindin?”

  “Sir?” For a moment Rumm looked puzzled, as though he’d never heard the name. Then his expression cleared. “Sir, she’s about. Somewhere. She knows her duties. I leave her to tend them. You’ll find her dusting or polishing. Doing laundry. Or outside with the chickens. As I say, she’s about.”

  He needed to see her. It wasn’t wise, but he didn’t care. Venette was right, curse her. Barl Lindin and Maris could not live beneath the same roof. He’d have to send her away. But before he did…

  “I’ll have words with her, Rumm,” he said, cool and distant again, as was proper. “If Ranmer wants me, see I’m told of it without delay.”

  “Sir,” said Rumm, bowing, and took himself and his dying flowers away.

  Morgan glanced after him, surprised by a sudden surge of affection. For a servant? He was doddled. Shrugging that aside, he reached out with his mage-sense, searching for Barl… and couldn’t find her.

  Though it was impossible, she was gone.

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Breaking Morgan Danfey’s attic door ward was no more difficult than unpicking the golden threads of his binding. Not now that she had his measure.

  Even so, Barl couldn’t help feeling a thrill as the last intricate counter-cant surrendered to her meddling. Nothing and no-one, unranked Barl Lindin, proving herself the best mage in Dorana. What a pity she couldn’t shout her triumph from the rooftops. But this unlikely talent would have to remain a secret, even from Remmie.

  She was meant to be in the poultry coop, scrubbing filthy perches. Doubtless she should feel ashamed, that she’d crept up here the moment word spread to the servants of Lord Danfey’s collapse.

  Yes, I should. But I don’t.

  She would never feel guilty about magework again.

  Smiling, she eased herself into the attic and closed its door behind her, confident she could reactivate the ward once she’d poked about in the councillor’s workroom. Probably she could even rebind herself… but she wasn’t prepared to take such a chance. No, she’d run weeping to Morgan Danfey upon his return from the country. Show him herself how his binding had unravelled and beg him to reinstate it before the Council found out. He’d never dream it was her doing. She’d be perfectly safe.

  Yes, and thinking of his return she had to remember that must be soon. Rumm would surely send word to him once the pother had been and given his opinion of Lord Danfey’s health. Which meant she didn’t have long before she risked discovery.

  “So hurry up,” she muttered. “Don’t waste the little time you have.”

  She thought the danger of being here was outweighed by what she’d learn. If she could unravel Morgan Danfey with a hair clasp, how much deeper could she plumb him by exploring his heart? And this attic was his heart, of that she was sure.

  Same as his privy parlour, his workroom was ruthlessly neat, with shelving and cupboards and a long, wide workbench. He had crucibles and mortars in every possible size, lined up like Remmie’s pupils before the start of class. One whole wall was shelved full of catalysts. Scores of them, with a jar or pot for every element, and every element in its place. Running her fingertips along the rows, Barl marvelled at their variety. And the cost? After so many months of Arndel’s moaning over the prices of even the most common tinctures and powders, she dreaded to think what the councillor had spent here.

  And it wasn’t just the amount of money spent that shocked her. He possessed catalysts far trickier than gedlef and bidaline. There was susquinel and urvil and dozens of substances she’d never seen before, that set her mage-sense on edge. What kind of magework was Morgan Danfey doing, that he’d need dangerous catalysts like these?

  A pile of notebooks sat on the workbench. Acutely aware of time ticking by, she crossed to give them a cursory look. But when she flipped open the topmost journal and read the first neatly inscribed entry, describing the intricate theory behind a reworked elementary transmutation… time stopped.

  His mind was beautiful. Beautiful. Clarity and precision and unfettered imagination, tempered by a dash of arrogant recklessness she couldn’t help but admire.

  Almost laughing, she turned the page. Quickly read the next entry, a notation upon travel, and then eagerly read on. A theoretical postulation regarding the nature of time. An argument in favour of single-helixed wards, though they were old-fashioned and long out of favour. An exploration of the relationship between harmonic incants and the sigils that triggered them.

  Oh, he was bold. More than bold. He was fearless. Willing to run where most mages would not crawl.

  Being an incant for the creation of a fabulous cat…

  Seeing his witty sketches for an artisan cat toy complete with a rat to chase and a rusty, rumbling purr, she did laugh. How Remmie would love it. A perfect prize for his classroom.

  There were other toys imagined in the notebook. A windless kite incanted to tamely follow its owner, a sailed riverboat that created its own breeze, a little girl’s tea set, its transmutation incant designed to change cordial flavours with one w
ord. Astonished, Barl tried to reconcile the mage who’d bound her with the man who could dream up such delights for the young.

  Sketched in the margin of a page scrawled over with incomplete sigil designs, a small map of Dorana and its immediate neighbours. Scribbled beneath it a short, stark question. Are we safe? She frowned at it, startled.

  How odd. Of course we’re safe. Why wouldn’t he think so?

  She couldn’t imagine a reason.

  Several pages further on, past more partly worked-out sigils, six different variations of the one incant, scrawled through and scribbled over with countless pen—strokes, messy as chicken-scratchings in the dirt. Written underneath them, a revealing cry from the heart.

  Every attempt ends in failure. I begin to lose hope.

  Oh. He sounded so—so—vulnerable.

  Moved, discomfited, she hastened through the rest of his notes.

  At the back of the notebook she found another kind of incant entirely. A reworking of something called Hartigan’s transmutation. She’d not heard of it before and wasn’t certain she understood Morgan Danfey’s intent in the way he wanted to alter it. What she did see, almost immediately, was that it was a longer version of the incant that he’d so despairingly scrawled over.

  And, now that she could read it properly, she could also see where he’d made his fundamental mistake.

  But as she re-read his preamble, trying to fathom the new incant’s purpose, the attic’s closed door crashed open.

  “Mage Lindin?” Framed in the doorway, Morgan Danfey stared in furious astonishment. “What are you doing?”

  She had no idea how to answer. Took a prudent step sideways, away from his workbench and notes.

  The councillor stepped over his own threshold and slammed the door shut. “Who unbound you?”

  Heart hammering, she met his blazing gaze. “No-one. I dreamed again. It was terrible. As I came wake, screaming again, the incant unravelled.”

  He shook his head. “You’re lying.”

  If she looked away, if she so much as blinked, he’d be on her like a wolf.

  “How else could the binding have broken?”

  “And the warding on this attic? I suppose that unravelled too?”

  Remmie liked to play spindle stones down at The Greased Pig. Sometimes he won the game and sometimes he lost, but he never risked a few cuicks. He always gambled with trins.

  “If you’re going to wager,” he liked to say, “then best make it worth your while.”

  Barl lifted her chin. “There was no ward, Councillor. And the door was unlocked. It’s not strange you forgot to secure it, sir. There is much on your mind.”

  “What?” Incredulous, he laughed. “You must think me Feenish, that I’d swallow pap like that.” Then his angry amusement faded and he was staring again, his fingers clenching and unclenching, white-knuckled, by his sides. “I want the truth, Mage Lindin. You’ll not leave here until I get it.”

  Her skin prickled with cold sweat. What remained of her breakfast churned in her belly like swill.

  He could kill me for this. He might kill me for this. At least, he might try. Does he think I won’t defend myself? Does he think I’ll die without raising my hand?

  For all that she’d unravelled his magework and read through his notes, she didn’t know him well enough to be certain of the answers.

  But I started this, didn’t I? And now I must end it… one way or another.

  “The truth, Councillor Danfey? All right. I broke your binding. And I broke your ward.”

  “Impossible.”

  “You demanded the truth, sir. That’s it.”

  “You broke—” Half turning away, he dragged a hand down his face. A faint rasping sound, as his fingers scraped over stubble. Then he turned back. “Why?”

  “Why do you care?”

  “Answer the question!”

  Let him shout and rage at her, she wasn’t going to show him her fear. And she wouldn’t spare him, either, this mage—this man—who had wrapped her in torments no civilised person should embrace.

  “I had to,” she snapped. “I did dream again. I did wake your binding. I was in agony, Councillor, and you weren’t here to end it.”

  He flinched. In his narrowed eyes, he flinched. “You would make this my fault?”

  “I didn’t bind myself, did I?”

  “The Council would say so.”

  “And are you the Council, sir?”

  He flinched again. “And my ward? It was no threat to you. Why break that?”

  “I was curious. I wanted to see where you worked.”

  “Curious,” he murmured. “Curious. Mage Lindin—” Frowning, he pinched the bridge of his nose. “So, now you are free, with powers even greater than I realised.”

  “Free?” She laughed at him. “Only you could think so, a man who was never constrained a day in his life. I am no more free now than I was the day I arrived. For all the good breaking my binding has done me, I might as well not have bothered. For even unbound, you have ways to hurt me. Why do you think I didn’t break this estate’s wardings and run? Until you and your precious Council decree I am punished enough I remain your prisoner. The power here is all yours.”

  He was upon her in scant strides, the fingers of his right hand spread and pressing the flesh of her face against its bones, driving her backwards until her head struck the window. On a cry of pain she heard the glass crack.

  “And you hate me for it, don’t you?” he said, his voice low and unsteady. “Lord Danfey. Is his collapse your doing? Tell me!”

  Sharply hurting, she fought not to tug at his prisoning fingers. “Is what my doing? I don’t understand.”

  “No more lies, Mage Lindin! I can rend you flesh from bone and I will, I swear it, if you—”

  “I’m not lying,” she said, then gasped as his fingers crushed tighter. “Not this time. Let go.”

  He leaned so close she could have counted his eyelashes. “Tell me what you did to my father or I will visit such pain upon you that—”

  Had he gone mad? “I’ve done nothing to your father! If there’s magework behind Lord Danfey’s strife, it’s not mine.”

  Head thrown back, he stared down at her. “And why should I believe you? A mage who can break both binding and ward. A mage who should not exist… and does.”

  “Because I’m telling the truth.”

  He said nothing to that. His eyes, still furious, were narrowed to slits. But the pressure of his fingers eased.

  And then he released her.

  “So,” she said, touching the bruised places on her skin. “You do believe me.”

  “Yes,” he whispered at last. He sounded almost… defeated.

  Letting her hand fall, Barl watched him walk to his workbench and return the notebook she’d been reading to its place on top of the others. His fingers weren’t steady.

  “Is Lord Danfey very ill?”

  He tensed. “Lord Danfey is dying.”

  Oh, the desolation in his voice. I don’t care for his pain. I don’t. But even so, she felt something. She wasn’t carved from stone. “I’m sorry.”

  “Are you?” Savagely he swung around. “Mage Lindin, why—”

  “I lost both my parents, Councillor, while I was still young. I’m no stranger to grief.”

  Whatever he’d been expecting, she thought it wasn’t that. His jaw tightened, muscle leaping, and for a moment his breathing hitched. “You think to disarm me with sad tales of your youth?”

  “No! I simply wanted to—”

  “You wanted,” he said, scathing. “Must the world always spin to your wanting, Mage Lindin? As far as I can see, your wanting has caused nothing but trouble!”

  He sounded like Remmie. “That is unfair.”

  “Is it?” His hand slapped the workbench. “Does that mean you don’t expect me to hold my tongue on what’s happened here? You don’t expect me to pretend you didn’t break my binding and the ward on that door? When both should be imposs
ible?”

  She felt her skin crawl with rewoken fright. “If you tell the Council—”

  “If? If?” Morgan Danfey slapped the bench again, and then started pacing. “Mage Lindin, it is my duty to tell the Council what you’ve done. What you are.”

  “And if you tell them, who can say what they’ll do? Are you so resentful of my unusual talent you’d live the rest of your life with my blood on your hands?”

  He swung round as though she’d struck him. “I do not resent your talent!”

  Was that true? She couldn’t tell. “Then you resent the inconvenience I’ve caused you,” she said, sure of that much. “Doubtless I was selfish and short-sighted, not to let your binding kill me. It would’ve proven to the Council I am a mage misjudged, and they could have sent Remmie a brief note of regret.”

  “Do not presume to tell me what I feel, Mage Lindin!” he said, furious, and closed on her. “Trust me when I say you have no notion what I feel!”

  She swallowed. He was like a caged desert cat, ready to lash out at the least provocation. “I’m sorry.”

  “And that’s a lie,” he retorted, halting before her. “Whatever you are, Barl Lindin, we both know you’re not sorry. Not for bloodying Hahren or challenging the Council or breaking my binding or sneaking in here!”

  “I admit,” she said, after a moment, “I was wrong to break your ward and trespass in your workroom. But as for the rest—”

  “You were wrong in all of it!”

  “No, I was not! The College’s ruling was unjust, Hahren laid hands on me, and if I hadn’t broken your binding I would be dead.”

  That halted him. “Nonsense. My binding was not lethal.”

  “I beg to differ. You saw what happened the first time your binding woke. Stand there and tell me to my face that my life then was not in peril. I dare you.”

  Silence, as they stared at each other. Then he retreated to rest both hands on the attic door. His head lowered between his outstretched arms, and after a time he breathed out a long, slow sigh.

  “How did you do it? How did you break my binding and ward?”

  Still wary, she eased away from the wall and window and gingerly touched the back of her head. There was a bump, but nothing worse than that. Her fingertips remained dry. To make a point, to carve a little space and time for herself to think, she mended the cracked windowpane.